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BY 

SIDNEY  COLVIN 


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(tfnglbl)  Jttcn  of  fetters 

EDITED  BY  JOHN  MORLEY 


K  E  A.T  S 


BY 


SIDNEY    COLYIN 


NEW    YORK 
HARPER   &   BROTHERS,   PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN     SQUARE 


LI 


ENGLISH   MEN  OF  LETTERS. 

Edited  by  John  Morley. 


Johnson Leslie  Stephen. 

Gibbon J.  C.  Morison. 

Scott R.  H.  Hutton. 

Shhlley J.  A.  Symonds. 

Hume T.  H.  Huxley. 

Goldsmith William   Black. 

Defoe William  Minto. 

Burns J.  C.  Shairp. 

Spenser R.  W.  Church. 

Thackeray Anthony  Trollope. 

Burke John   Morley. 

Milton Mark  Pattison. 

Hawthorne Henry  James,  Jr. 

Southey E.  Dowden. 

Chaucer A.  W.  Ward. 

Bunyan J.  A.  Froude. 

Cowper Goldwin  Smith. 

Pope Leslie  Stephen. 

Byron John  Nichol. 


Locke Thomas  Fowler. 

Wordsworth F.  Myers. 

Dryden G.  Saintsbury. 

Landor Sidney  Colvin. 

De  Quincey David  Masson. 

Lamb Alfred  Ainger. 

Bentley R.  C.  Jebb. 

Dickens A.  W.  Ward. 

Gray E.  W.  Gosse. 

Swift Leslie  Stephen. 

Sterns H.  D.  Traill. 

Macaulay J.  Cotter  Morison. 

Fielding Austin  Dobson. 

Sheridan  Mrs.  Oliphant. 

Addison W.  J.  Courthope. 

Bacon R.  W.  Church. 

Coleridge H.  D.  Traill. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney... J.  A.  Symonds. 
Keats Sidney  Colvin. 


i2mo,  Cloth,  75  cents  per  volume. 
Other  volumes  in  preparation. 


Published  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  New  York. 

r*  Any  of  the  above  works  will  be  sent  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part 
ef  the  United  States  or  Canadi,  on  receipt  0/  the  price. 


PEEFACE. 


With  the  name  of  Keats  that  of  his  first  biographer,  the  late  Lord 
Houghton,  must  always  justly  remain  associated.  But  while  the  sym- 
pathetic charm  of  Lord  Houghton's  work  will  keep  it  fresh,  as  a  rec- 
ord of  the  poet's  life  it  can  no  longer  be  said  to  be  sufficient.  Since 
the  revised  edition  of  the  Life  and  Letters  appeared  in  1867,  other 
students  and  lovers  of  Keats  have  been  busy,  and  much  new  infor- 
mation concerning  him  been  brought  to  light,  while  of  the  old  infor- 
mation some  has  been  proved  mistaken.  No  connected  account  of 
Keats's  life  and  work,  in  accordance  with  the  present  state  of  knowl- 
edge, exists,  and  I  have  been  asked  to  contribute  such  an  account  to 
the  present  series.  I  regret  that  lack  of  strength  and  leisure  has  so 
long  delayed  the  execution  of  the  task  entrusted  to  me.  The  chief 
authorities  and  printed  texts  which  I  have  consulted  (besides  the 
original  editions  of  the  Poems)  are  the  following : 

1.  Lord  Byron  and  some  of  his  Contemporaries.     By  Leigh  Hunt. 
London,  1828. 

2.  The  Life  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.     By  Thomas  Medwin.     2 
vols.,  London,  1847. 

3.  Life,  Letters,  and  Literary  Remains  of  John  Keats.    Edited  by 
Richard  Monckton  Milnes.     2  vols.,  London,  1848. 

4.  Life  of  Benjamin  Robert  Haydon.     Edited  and  compiled  by 
Tom  Taylor.     Second  Edition.     3  vols.,  London,  1853. 

5.  The  Autobiography  of   Leigh   Hunt,  with   Reminiscences  of 
Friends  and  Contemporaries.      3  vols.,  London,  1850. 

6.  The  Poetical  Works  of  John  Keats.     With  a  Memoir  by  Rich- 
ard Monckton  Milnes.     London,  1854. 

7.  The  Autobiography  of  Leigh  Hunt.     [Revised  edition,  edited 
by  Thornton  Hunt.]     London,  1860. 

8.  The  Vicissitudes  of  Keats's  Fame  :  an  article  by  Joseph  Severn 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  Magazine  for  1863  (vol.  xi.,  p.  401). 

9.  The  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Keats.     By   Lord  Houghton. 
New  Edition,  London,  1867. 

10.  Recollections  of  John  Keats  :  an  article  by  Charles  Cowden 
Clarke  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  1874  (N.S.,  vol.  xii.,  p.  177). 
Afterwards  reprinted  with  modifications  in  Recollections  of  Writers, 
by  Charles  and  Mary  Cowden  Clarke.     Loudon,  1878. 


M822285 


vi  PREFACE. 

11.  The  Papers  of  a  Critic.  Selected  from  the  writings  of  the 
late  Charles  Wentworth  Dilke.  With  a  biographical  notice  by  Sir 
Charles  Wentworth  Dilke,  Bart.,  M.P.     2  vols.,  London,  1875. 

12.  Benjamin  Robert  Haydon :  Correspondence  and  Table-Talk. 
With  a  Memoir  by  Frederic  Wordsworth  Haydon.  2  vols.,  London, 
1876. 

13.  The  Poetical  Works  of  John  Keats,  chronologically  arranged 
and  edited,  with  a  memoir,  by  Lord  Houghton  [Aldine  edition  of  the 
British  Poets].     London,  1876. 

14.  Letters  of  John  Keats  to  Fanny  Brawne,  with  Introduction 
and  Notes  by  Harry  Buxton  Forman.     London,  1878. 

A  biographer  cannot  ignore  these  letters  now  that  they  are  pub- 
lished ;  but  their  publication  must  be  regretted  by  all  who  hold  that 
human  respect  and  delicacy  are  due  to  the  dead  no  less  than  to  the 
livimr,  and  to  genius  no  less  that  to  obscurity. 

15T  The  Poetical  Works  and  other  Writings  of  John  Keats.  Ed- 
ited, with  notes  and  appendices,  by  Harry  Buxton  Forman.  4  vols., 
London, 1883. 

In  this  edition,  besides  the  texts  reprinted  from  the  first  editions, 
all  the  genuine  letters  and  additional  poems  published  in  8,  6,  9,  13, 
and  14  of  the  above  are  brought  together,  as  well  as  most  of  the 
biographical  notices  contained  in  1,  2,  4,  5,  7,  10,  and  12;  also_  a 
series  of  previously  unpublished  letters  of  Keats  to  his  sister ;  with 
a  great  amount  of' valuable  illustrative  and  critical  material  besides. 
Except  for  a  few  errors,  which  I  shall  have  occasion  to  point  out, 
Mr.  Forman's  work  might  for  the  purpose  of  the  student  be  final, 
and  I  have  necessarily  been  indebted  to  it  at  every  turn. 

16.  The  Letters  and  Poems  of  John  Keats.  Edited  by  John  Gil- 
mer Speed.     3  vols.,  New  York,  1883. 

17.  The  Poetical  Works  of  John  Keats.  Edited  by  William  T. 
Arnold.     London,  1884. 

The  Introduction  to  this  edition  contains  the  only  attempt  with 
which  I  am  acquainted  at  an  analysis  of  the  formal  elements  of 
Keats's  style. 

18.  An  ^Esculapian  Poet  — John  Keats:  an  article  by  Dr.  B.  W. 
Richardson  in  the  Asclepiad  for  1884  (vol.  i.,  p.  134). 

19.  Notices  and  correspondence  concerning  Keats  which  have  ap- 
peared at  intervals  during  a  number  of  years  in  the  Athenceum. 

In  addition  to  printed  materials  I  have  made  use  of  the  following 
unpriuted,  viz. : 

I.  Houghton  MSS.  Under  this  title  I  refer  to  the  contents  of  an 
album  from  the  library  at  Fryston  Hall,  in  which  the  late  Lord 
Houghton  bound  up  a  quantity  of  the  materials  he  had  used  in  the 
preparation  of  the  Life  and  Letters,  as  well  as  of  correspondence  con- 
cerning Keats  addressed  to  him  both  before  and  after  the  publication 
of  his  book.  The  chief  contents  are  the  manuscript  memoir  of  Keats 
by  Charles  Brown,  which  was  offered  by  the  writer  in  vain  to  Galig- 
nani,  and  I  believe  other  publishers;  transcripts  by  the  same  hand' 
of  a  few  of  Keats's  poems;  reminiscences  or  brief  memoirs  of  the 


PREFACE.  vii 

poet  by  bis  friends  Charles  Cowden  Clarke  (the  first  draft  of  the 
paper  above  cited  as  No.  10),  Henry  Stephens,  George  Felton  Matthew, 
Joseph  Severn,  and  Benjamin  Bailey ;  together  with  letters  from  all 
the  above,  from  John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  and  several  others.  For 
the  use  of  this  collection,  without  which  my  work  must  have  been  at- 
tempted to  little  purpose,  I  am  indebted  to  the  kindness  of  its  owner, 
the  present  Lord  Houghton. 

II.  "Woodhouse  MSS.  A.  A  common-place  book,  in  which  Richard 
Woodhouse,  the  friend  of  Keats  and  of  his  publishers,  Messrs.  Taylor 
&  Hessey,  transcribed  —  as  would  appear  from  internal  evidence, 
about  midsummer  1819 — the  chief  part  of  Keats's  poems  at  that 
date  unpublished.  The  transcripts  are  in  many  cases  made  from 
early  drafts  of  the  poems ;  some  contain  gaps  which  Woodhouse  has 
filled  up  in  pencil  from  later  drafts,  to  others  are  added  corrections, 
or  suggestions  for  corrections,  some  made  in  the  hand  of  Mr.  Taylor 
and  some  in  that  of  Keats  himself. 

III.  Woodhouse  MSS.  B.  A  note-book  in  which  the  same  Wood- 
house  has  copied — evidently  for  Mr.  Taylor,  at  the  time  when  that 
gentleman  was  meditating  a  biography  of  the  poet — a  number  of 
letters  addressed  by  Keats  to  Mr.  Taylor  himself,  to  the  transcriber, 
to  Reynolds  and  his  sisters,  to  Rice  and  Bailey.  Three  or  four  of 
these  letters,  as  well  as  portions  of  a  few  others,  are  unpublished. 

Both  the  volumes  last  named  were  formerly  the  property  of  Mrs. 
Taylor,  the  widow  of  the  publisher,  and  are  now  my  own.  A  third 
manuscript  volume  by  Woodhouse,  containing  personal  notices  and 
recollections  of  Keats,  was  unluckily  destroyed  in  the  fire  at  Messrs. 
Kegan  Paul  &  Co.'s  premises  in  1883.  A  copy  of  Endymion,  anno- 
tated by  the  same  hand,  has  been  used  by  Mr.  Forman  in  his  edition 
(above,  No.  15). 

IV.  Severs  MSS.  The  papers  and  correspondence  left  by  the  late 
Joseph  Severn,  containing  materials  for  what  should  be  a  valuable 
biography,  have  been  put  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  William  Sharp,  to  be 
edited  and  published  at  his  discretion.  In  the  meantime  Mr.  Sharp 
has  been  so  kind  as  to  let  me  have  access  to  such  parts  of  them  as 
relate  to  Keats.  The  most  important  single  piece,  an  essay  on 
"The  Vicissitudes  of  Keats's  Fame,"  has  been  printed  already  in 
the  Atlantic  Monthly  (above,  No.  8),  but  in  the  remainder  I  have 
found  many  interesting  details,  particularly  concerning  Keats's  voy- 
age to  Italy  and  life  at  Rome. 

V.  Rawlings  v.  Jennings.  When  Keats's  maternal  grandfather, 
Mr.  John  Jennings,  died  in  1805,  leaving  property  exceeding  the 
amount  of  the  specific  bequests  under  his  will,  it  was  thought  neces- 
sary that  his  estate  should  be  administered  by  the  Court  of  Chancery, 
and  with  that  intent  a  friendly  suit  was  brought  in  the  names  of  his 
daughter  and  her  second  husband  (Frances  Jennings,  m.  1st  Thomas 
Keats  and  2d  William  Rawlings)  against  her  mother  and  brother, 
who  were  the  executors.  The  proceedings  in  this  suit  are  referred  to 
under  the  above  title.  They  are  complicated  and  voluminous^  ex- 
tending over  a  period  of  twenty  years,  and  my  best  thanks  are  due 


viii  FREFACE. 

to  Mr.  Ralph  Thomas,  of  27  Chancery  Lane,  for  his  friendly  pains  in 
searching  through  and  making  abstracts  of  them. 

For  help  and  information,  besides  what  has  been  above  acknowl- 
edged, I  am  indebted  first  and  foremost  to  my  friend  and  colleague, 
Mr.  Richard  Garnett ;  and  next  to  the  poet's  surviving  sister,  Mrs. 
Llanos  ;  to  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  who  lent  me  the  chief  part  of  his  valu- 
able collection  of  Keats's  books  and  papers  (already  well  turned  to 
account  by  Mr.  Forman);  to  Dr.  B.  W.  Richardson  and  the  Rev.  R. 
R.  Hadden.  Other  incidental  obligations  will  be  found  acknowl- 
edged in  the  footnotes. 

Among  essays  on  and  reviews  of  Keats's  work  I  need  only  refer 
in  particular  to  that  by  the  late  Mrs.  F.  M.  Owen  (Keats  :  A  Study, 
London,  1876).  In  its  main  outlines,  though  not  in  details,  I  accept 
and  have  followed  this  lady's  interpretation  of  Endymion.  For  the 
rest  every  critic  of  Modern  English  poetry  is  of  necessity  a  critic  of 
Keats.  The  earliest,  Leigh  Hunt,  was  one  of  the  best ;  and  to  name 
only  a  few  among  the  living — where  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  Mr.  Swin- 
burne, Mr.  Lowell,  Mr.  Palgrave,  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  Mr.  W.  B.  Scott, 
Mr.  Roden  Noel,  Mr.  Theodore  Watts,  have  gone  before,  for  one  who 
follows  to  be  both  original  and  just  is  not  easy.  In  the  following 
pages  I  have  not  attempted  to  avoid  saying  over  again  much  that  in 
substance  has  been  said  already,  and  doubtless  better,  by  others :  by 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  and  Mr.  Palgrave  especially.  I  doubt  not  but 
they  will  forgive  me ;  and  at  the  same  time  I  hope  to  have  contrib- 
uted something  of  my  own  towards  a  fuller  understanding  both  of 
Keats's  art  and  life. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Birth  and  Parentage.  —  School  Life  at  Enfield.  —  Life  as  Surgeon's 
Apprentice  at  Edmonton. — Awakening  to  Poetry. — Life  as  Hospi- 
tal Student  in  London.     [1795-1817.] Page    1 

CHAPTER  II. 

Particulars  of  Early  Life  in  London.— Friendships  and  First  Poems. 
—Henry  Stephens.— Felton  Mathew.  —  Cowden  Clarke.— Leigh 
Hunt:  his  literary  and  personal  influence. — John  Hamilton  Reyn- 
olds.—James  Rice.— Cornelius  Webb.— ^helley^— Haydon.— Jo- 
seph Severn. — Charles  Wells. — Other  acquaintances. — Determina- 
tion to  publish.     [1814— April,  1817.] .     18 

CHAPTER  III. 
The  "Poems"  of  1817 50 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Excursion  to  Isle  of  Wight,  Margate,  and  Canterbury.— Summer  at 
Hampstead.— New  friends:  Dilke,  Brown,  Bailey.— With  Bailey 
at  Oxford.— Return  :  Old  Friends  at  Odds.— JBurford  Bridge.— Win- 
ter at  Hampstead.— Wordsworth,  Lamb,  Hazlitt.—  Poetical  Activ- 
ity.—Spring  at  Teignmouth. — Studies  and  Anxieties. — Marriage 
and  Emigration  of  George  Keats.    [April,  1817 — May,  1818.].     67 

CHAPTER  V. 
Endymion     .     .     .     .' 92 

1* 


x        .  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Northern  Tour.— The  Blackwood  and  Quarterly  Reviews. — Death  of 
Tom  Keats. — Removal  to  Wentworth  Place.— Fanny  Brawne. — Ex- 
cursion to  Chichester.— Absorption  in  Love  and  Poetry. — Haydon 
and  Money  Difficulties. — Family  Correspondence. — Darkening  Pros- 
pects.— Summer  at  Shanklin  and  Winchester. — Wise  Resolutions. — 
Return  from  Winchester.    [June,  1818— October,  1819.]  .  Page  110 

CHAPTER  VIL 

Isabella.— Hyperion.— TJie  Eve  of  St.  Agnes.— The  Eve  of  St.  Mark.— 
La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merei— Lamia.— The  Odes.— The  Plays  .145 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Return  to  Wentworth  Place.— Autumn  occupations:  The ^  Cap  and 
Jlells;  Recast  of  Hyperion.  —  Growing  despondency. — Visit  of 
George  Keats  to  England.— Attack  of  illness  in  February.— Rally 
in  the  Spring. — Summer  in  Kentish  Town. — Publication  of  the 
Lamia  volume.— Relapse.— Ordered  South.— Voyage  to  Italy,  Na- 
ples, Rome.— Last  Days  and  Death.  [October,  1819  — February, 
1821.] 1V8 


CHAPTER  IX. 
Character  and  Genius 207 


c, 


APPENDIX 219 


KEATS. 


CHAPTER  I. 


Birth  and  Parentage.-School  Life  at  Enfield.— Life  as  Surgeon's 
Apprentice  at  Edmonton.— Awakening  to  Poetry.— Life  as  Hospi- 
tal Student  in  London  [1795—1817]. 

Science  may  one  day  ascertain  the  laws  of  distribution 
and  descent  which  govern  the  births  of  genius,  but  in  the 
meantime  a  birth  like  that  of  Keats  presents  to  the  ordi- 
nary mind  a  striking  instance  of  nature's  inscrutability. 
If  we  consider  the  other  chief  poets  of  the  time,  we  can 
commonly  recognize  either  some  strain  of  power  in  their 
blood  or  some  strong  inspiring  influence  in  the  scenery 
and  traditions  of  their  home.  Thus  we  see  Scott  prepared 
alike  by  his  origin,  associations,  and  circumstances  to  be 
the  "  minstrel  of  his  clan  "  and  poet  of  the  romance  of  the 
border  wilds ;  while  the  spirit  of  the  Cumbrian  hills,  and 
the  temper  of  the  generations  bred  among  them,  speak 
naturally  through  the  lips  of  Wordsworth.  Byron  seems 
inspired  in  literature  by  demons  of  the  same  fro  ward 
brood  that  had  urged  others  of  his  lineage  through  lives 
of  adventure  or  of  crime.  But  Keats,  with  instincts  and 
faculties  more  purely  poetical  than  any  of  these,  was  par- 
adoxically born  in  a  dull  and  middling  walk  of  English 
city  life ;  and  "  if  by  traduction  came  his  mind  "—to  quote 


2  KEATS.  [chap. 

Dryden  with  a  difference — it  was  through  channels  too 
obscure  for  us  to  trace.  His  father,  Thomas  Keats,  was  a 
west-country  lad  who  came  young  to  London,  and  while 
still  under  twenty  held  the  place  of  head  ostler  in  a  livery- 
stable  kept  by  a  Mr.  John  Jennings  in  Finsbury.  Present- 
ly he  married  his  employer's  daughter,  Frances  Jennings; 
and  Mr.  Jennings,  who  was  a  man  of  substance,  retiring 
about  the  same  time  to  live  in  the  country,  at  Ponder's 
End,  left  the  management  of  the  business  in  the  hands  of 
his  son-in-law.  The  young  couple  lived  at  the  stable,  at 
the  sign  of  the  Swan-and-Hoop,  Finsbury  Pavement,  facing 
the  then  open  space  of  Lower  Moorfields.  Here  their  el- 
dest child,  the  poet  John  Keats,  was  born  prematurely  on 
either  the  29th  or  31st  of  October,  1795.  A  second  son, 
named  George,  followed  on  February  28,  1797;  a  third, 
Tom,  on  November  18, 1799  ;  a  fourth,  Edward,  who  died 
in  infancy,  on  April  28,  1801;  and  on  the  3d  of  June, 
1803,  a  daughter,  Frances  Mary.  In  the  meantime  the 
family  had  moved  from  the  stable  to  a  house  in  Craven 
Street,  City  Road,  half  a  mile  farther  north.1 

In  the  gifts  and  temperament  of  Keats  we  shall  find 
much  that  seems  characteristic  of  the  Celtic  rather  than 
the  English  nature.  Whether  he  really  had  any  of  that 
blood  in  his  veins  we  cannot  tell.  His  father  was  a  native 
either  of  Devon  or  of  Cornwall,2  and  his  mother's  name, 
Jennings,  is  common  in,  but  not  peculiar  to,  Wales.  There 
our  evidence  ends,  and  all  that  we  know  further  of  his  pa- 
rents is  that  they  were  certainly  not  quite  ordinary  people. 
Thomas  Keats  was  noticed  in  his  life-time  as  a  man  of  in- 
telligence and  conduct — "  of  so  remarkably  fine  a  common 
sense  and  native  respectability,"  writes  Cowden  Clarke,  in 
whose  father's  school  the  poet  and  his  brothers  were 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  219.  2  Ibid. 


i]  BIRTH  AND  PARENTAGE.  3 

brought  up, "  that  I  perfectly  remember  the  warm  terms  in 
■which  his  demeanour  used  to  be  canvassed  by  my  parents 
after  he  had  been  to  visit  his  boys."  It  is  added  that  he 
resembled  his  illustrious  son  in  person  and  feature,  being 
of  small  stature  and  lively  energetic  countenance,  with 
brown  hair  and  hazel  eyes.  Of  his  wife,  the  poet's  moth- 
er, we  learn  more  vaguely  that  she  was  "  tall,  of  good  fig- 
ure, with  large  oval  face,  and  sensible  deportment ;"  and 
again,  that  she  was  a  lively,  clever,  impulsive  woman,  pas- 
sionately fond  of  amusement,  and  supposed  to  have  hast- 
ened the  birth  of  her  eldest  child  by  some  imprudence. 
Her  second  son,  George,  wrote  in  after  life  of  her  and  of 
her  family  as  follows:  "My  grandfather  [Mr.  Jennings] 
was  very  well  off,  as  his  will  shows,  and  but  that  he  was 
extremely  generous  and  gullible  would  have  been  affluent. 
I  have  heard  my  grandmother  speak  with  enthusiasm  of 
his  excellencies,  and  Mr.  Abbey  used  to  say  that  he  never 
saw  a  woman  of  the  talents  and  sense  of  my  grandmother, 
except  my  mother."  And  elsewhere  :  "  My  mother  I  dis- 
tinctly remember,  she  resembled  John  very  much  in  the 
face,  was  extremely  fond  of  him,  and  humoured  him  in 
every  whim,  of  which  he  had  not  a  few,  she  was  a  most 
excellent  and  affectionate  parent,  and  as  I  thought  a  wom- 
an of  uncommon  talents.'1 

The  mother's  passion  for  her  firstborn  son  was  devotedly 
returned  by  him.  Once  as  a  young  child,  when  she  was 
ordered  to  be  left  quiet  during  an  illness,  he  is  said  to  have 
insisted  on  keeping  watch  at  her  door  with  an  old  sword, 
and  allowing  no  one  to  go  in.  Haydon,  an  artist  who 
loved  to  lay  his  colours  thick,  gives  this  anecdote  of  the 
sword  a  different  turn :  "  He  was,  when  an  infant,  a  most 
violent  and  ungovernable  child.  At  five  years  of  age  or 
thereabouts,  he  once  got  hold  of  a  naked  sword,  and  shut- 


4  KEATS.  [chap. 

ting  the  door  swore  nobody  should  go  out.  His  mother 
wanted  to  do  so,  but  he  threatened  her  so  furiously  she  be- 
gan to  cry,  and  was  obliged  to  wait  till  somebody  through 
the  window  saw  her  position  and  came  to  the  rescue." 
Another  trait  of  the  poet's  childhood,  mentioned  also  by 
Haydon,  on  the  authority  of  a  gammer  who  had  known 
him  from  his  birth,  is  that  when  he  was  first  learning  to 
speak,  instead  of  answering  sensibly,  he  had  a  trick  of 
making  a  rhyme  to  the  last  word  people  said  and  then 
laughing. 

The  parents  were  ambitious  for  their  boys,  and  would 
have  liked  to  send  them  to  Harrow,  but  thinking  this  be- 
yond their  means,  chose  the  school  kept  by  the  Rev.  John 
Clarke  at  Enfield.  The  brothers  of  Mrs.  Keats  had  been 
educated  here,  and  the  school  was  one  of  good  repute,  and 
of  exceptionally  pleasant  aspect  and  surroundings.  Traces 
of  its  ancient  forest  character  lingered  long,  and  indeed  lin- 
ger yet,  about  the  neighbourhood  of  the  picturesque  small 
suburban  town  of  Enfield,  and  the  district  was  one  espe- 
cially affected  by  City  men  of  fortune  for  their  homes. 
The  school-house  occupied  by  Mr.  Clarke  had  been  origi- 
nally built  for  a  rich  West-India  merchant,  in  the  finest 
style  of  early  Georgian  classic  architecture,  and  stood  in  a 
pleasant  and  spacious  garden  at  the  lower  end  of  the  town. 
When,  years  afterwards,  the  site  was  used  for  a  railway  sta- 
tion, the  old  house  was  for  some  time  allowed  to  stand ; 
but  later  it  was  taken  down,  and  the  facade,  with  its  fine 
proportions  and  rich  ornaments  in  moulded  brick,  was 
transported  to  the  South  Kensington  Museum  as  a  choice 
example  of  the  style. 

Not  long  after  Keats  had  been  put  to  school  he  lost  his 
father,  who  was  killed  by  a  fall  from  his  horse  as  he  rode 
home  at  night  from  Southgate.     This  was  on  the  16th  of 


i.]  SCHOOL  LIFE.  5 

April,  1804.  Within  twelve  months  his  mother  had  put 
off  her  weeds  and  taken  a  second  husband — one  William 
Rawlings,  described  as  "  of  Moorgate,  in  the  city  of  Lon- 
don, stable-keeper,"  presumably,  therefore,  the  successor  of 
her  first  husband  in  the  management  of  her  father's  busi- 
ness. This  marriage  turned  out  unhappily.  It  was  soon 
followed  by  a  separation,  and  Mrs.  Rawlings  went  with  her 
children  to  live  at  Edmonton,  in  the  house  of  her  mother, 
Mrs.  Jennings,  who  was  just  about  this  time  left  a  widow.1 
In  the  correspondence  of  the  Keats  brothers  after  they 
were  grown  up  no  mention  is  ever  made  of  their  step- 
father, of  whom,  after  the  separation,  the  family  seem  to 
have  lost  all  knowledge.  The  household  in  Church  Street, 
Edmonton,  was  well  enough  provided  for,  Mr.  Jennings 
having  left  a  fortune  of  over  £13,000,  of  which,  in  addi- 
tion to  other  legacies,  he  bequeathed  a  capital  yielding 
£200  a  year  to  his  widow  absolutely ;  one  yielding  £50  a 
year  to  his  daughter  Frances  Rawlings,  with  reversion  to 
her  Keats  children  after  her  death ;  and  £1000  to  be  sep- 
arately held  in  trust  for  the  said  children,  and  divided 
among  them  on  their  coming  of  age.2  Between  this 
home,  then,  and  the  neighbouring  Enfield  school,  where 
he  was  in  due  time  joined  by  his  younger  brothers,  the 
next  four  or  five  years  of  Keats's  boyhood  (1806-1810) 
were  passed  in  sufficient  comfort  and  pleasantness.  He 
did  not  live  to  attain  the  years,  or  the  success,  of  men  who 
write  their  reminiscences ;  and  almost  the  only  recollec- 
tions he  has  left  of  his  own  early  days  refer  to  holiday 
times  in  his  grandmother's  house  at  Edmonton.  They  are 
conveyed  in  some  rhymes  which  he  wrote  years  afterwards, 
by  way  of  foolishness,  to  amuse  his  young  sister,  and  testify 

1  John  Jennings  died  March  8,  1805. 

2  Rawlings  v.  Jennings.     See  below,  p.  137,  and  Appendix,  p.  219. 


G  KEATS.  [chap. 

to  a  partiality,  common  also  to  little  boys  not  of  genius, 
for  dabbling  by  the  brookside— 

"  In  spite 
Of  the  might 
Of  the  Maid, 
Nor  afraid 
Of  his  granny-good  " — 

and  for  keeping  small  fishes  in  tubs. 

If  we  learn  little  of  Keats's  early  days  from  his  own 
lips,  we  have  sufficient  testimony  as  to  the  impression 
which  he  made  on  his  school  companions ;  which  was  that 
of  a  boy  all  spirit  and  generosity,  vehement  both  in  tears 
and  laughter,  handsome,  passionate,  pugnacious,  placable, 
lovable,  a  natural  leader  and  champion  among  his  fellows. 
But  beneath  this  bright  and  mettlesome  outside  there  lay 
deep  in  his  nature,  even  from  the  first,  a  strain  of  painful 
sensibility,  making  him  subject  to  moods  of  unreasonable 
suspicion  and  self-tormenting  melancholy.  These  he  was 
accustomed  to  conceal  from  all  except  his  brothers,  be- 
tween whom  and  himself  there  existed  the  very  closest  of 
fraternal  ties.  George,  the  second  brother,  had  all  John's 
spirit  of  manliness  and  honour,  with  a  less  impulsive  dis- 
position and  a  cooler  blood.  From  a  boy  he  was  the  big- 
ger and  stronger  of  the  two ;  and  at  school  found  himself 
continually  involved  in  fights  for,  and  not  unfrequently 
with,  his  small,  indomitably  fiery  elder  brother.  Tom,  the 
youngest,  was  always  delicate,  and  an  object  of  protecting 
care  as  well  as  the  warmest  affection  to  the  other  two. 
The  singularly  strong  family  sentiment  that  united  the 
three  brothers  extended  naturally  also  to  their  sister,  then 
a  child;  and  in  a  more  remote  and  ideal  fashion  to  their 
uncle  by  the  mother's  side,  Captain  Midgley  John  Jen- 


L]  SCHOOL  LIFE.  1 

nings,  a  tall  navy  officer  who  had  served  with  some  dis- 
tinction under  Duncan  at  Caraperdown,  and  who  impressed 
the  imagination  of  the  boys,  in  those  days  of  militant 
British  valour  by  land  and  sea,  as  a  model  of  manly  prow- 
ess.1 It  may  be  remembered  that  there  was  a  much  more 
distinguished  naval  hero  of  the  time  who  bore  their  own 
name— the  gallant  Admiral  Sir  Richard  Godwin  Keats  of 
the  Superb,  afterwards  governor  of  Greenwich  Hospital ; 
and  ho,  like  their  father,  came  from  the  west-country,  be- 
ing the  son  of  a  Bideford  clergyman.  But  it  seems  clear 
that  the  family  of  our  Keats  claimed  no  connection  with 
that  of  the  Admiral. 

Here  are  some  of  George  Keats's  recollections,  written 
after  the  death  of  his  elder  brother,  and  referring  partly 
to  their  school-days  and  partly  to  John's  character  after 
he  was  grown  up  : 

« I  loved  him  from  boyhood,  even  when  he  wronged  me,  for  the 
goodness  of  his  heart  and  the  nobleness  of  his  spirit.  Before  we  left 
school  we  quarrelled  often  and  fought  fiercely,  and  I  can  safely  say, 
and  my  schoolfellows  will  bear  witness,  that  John's  temper  was  the 
cause  of  all,  still  we  were  more  attached  than  brothers  ever  are. 

"From  the  time  we  were  boys  at  school,  where  we  loved,  jangled, 
and  fought  alternately,  until  we  separated  in  1818, 1  in  a  great  meas- 
ure relieved  him  by  continual  sympathy,  explanation,  and  inexhausti- 
ble spirits  and  good  humour,  from  many  a  bitter  fit  of  hypochondri- 
asm.  He  avoided  teazing  any  one  with  his  miseries  but  Tom  and 
myself,  and  often  asked  our  forgiveness ;  venting  and  discussing 
them  gave  him  relief." 

Let  us  turn  now  from  these  honest  and  warm  brotherly 
reminiscences  to  their  confirmation  in  the  words  of  two  of 
Keats's  school-friends ;  and  first  in  those  of  his  junior,  Ed- 
ward Holmes,  afterwards  author  of  the  Life  of  Mozart  : 

1  Captain  Jennings  died  October  8, 1808. 
B  ' 


8  KEATS.  [chap. 

"Keats  was  in  childhood  not  attached  to  books.  His  penchant 
was  for  fighting.  He  would  fight  any  one — morning,  noon,  and  night, 
his  brother  among  the  rest.  It  was  meat  and  drink  to  him.  .  .  .  His 
favourites  were  few ;  after  they  were  known  to  fight  readily  he  seem- 
ed to  prefer  them  for  a  sort  of  grotesque  and  buffoon  humour He 

was  a  boy  whom  any  one,  from  his  extraordinary  vivacity  and  per- 
sonal beauty,  might  easily  fancy  would  become  great — but  rather  in 
some  military  capacity  than  in  literature.  You  will  remark  that 
this  taste  came  out  rather  suddenly  and  unexpectedly.  ...  In  all  active 
exercises  he  excelled.  The  generosity  and  daring  of  his  character, 
with  the  extreme  beauty  and  animation  of  his  face,  made,  I  remem- 
ber, an  impression  on  me ;  and  being  some  years  his  junior,  I  was 
obliged  to  woo  his  friendship,  in  which  I  succeeded,  but  not  till  I 
had  fought  several  battles.  This  violence  and  vehemence  —  this 
pugnacity  and  generosity  of  disposition— in  passions  of  tears  or  out- 
rageous fits  of  laughter  —  always  in  extremes — will  help  to  paint 
Keats  in  his  boyhood.  Associated  as  they  were  with  an  extraordi- 
nary beauty  of  person  and  expression,  these  qualities  captivated  the 
boys,  and  no  one  was  more  popular."  ] 

Entirely  to  the  same  effect  is  the  account  of  Keats  given 
by  a  school  friend  seven  or  eight  years  older  than  himself, 
to  whose  appreciation  and  encouragement  the  world  most 
likely  owes  it  that  he  first  ventured  into  poetry.  This 
was  the  son  of  the  master,  Charles  Cowden  Clarke,  who 
towards  the  close  of  a  long  life,  during  which  he  had  de- 
served well  of  literature  in  more  ways  than  one,  wrote 
retrospectively  of  Keats : 

"  He  was  a  favourite  with  all.  Not  the  less  beloved  was  he  for  hav- 
ing a  highly  pugnacious  spirit,  which  when  roused  was  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  exhibitions — off  the  stage — I  ever  saw.  .  .  .  Upon 
one  occasion,  when  an  usher,  on  account  of  some  impertinent  behav- 
iour, had  boxed  his  brother  Tom's  ears,  John  rushed  up,  put  himself 
into  the  received  posture  of  offence,  and,  it  was  said,  struck  the  usher 
— who  could,  so  to  say,  have  put  him  in  his  pocket.     His  passion  at 

1  Houghton  MSS. 


L]  SCHOOL  LIFE.  9 

times  was  almost  ungovernable  ;  and  his  brother  George,  being  con- 
siderably the  taller  and  stronger,  used  frequently  to  hold  him  down 
by  main  force,  laughing  when  John  was  '  in  one  of  his  moods,'  and 
was  endeavouring  to  beat  him.  It  was  all,  however,  a  whisp-of-straw 
conflagration  ;  for  he  had  an  intensely  tender  affection  for  his  broth- 
ers, and  proved  it  upon  the  most  trying  occasions.  He  was  not  mere- 
ly the  favourite  of  all,  like  a  pet  prize-fighter,  for  his  terrier  courage  ; 
but  his  highmindedness,  his  utter  unconsciousness  of  a  mean  motive, 
his  placability,  his  generosity,  wrought  so  general  a  feeling  in  his  be- 
half that  I  never  heard  a  word  of  disapproval  from  any  one,  superior 
t>r  equal,  who  had  known  him." 

The  same  excellent  witness  records,  in  agreement  with 
the  last,  that  in  his  earlier  school-days  Keats  showed  no 
particular  signs  of  an  intellectual  bent,  though  always  or- 
derly and  methodical  in  what  he  did.     But  during  his  last 
few  terms,  that  is,  in  his  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  years,  all 
the  energies  of  his  nature  turned  to  study.      He  became 
suddenly  and  completely  absorbed  in  reading,  and  would 
be  continually  at  work  before  school-time  in  the  morning 
and  during  play-hours  in  the  afternoon ;  could  hardly  be 
induced  to  join  the  school  games,  and  never  willingly  had 
a  book  out  of  his  hand.     At  this  time  he  won  easily  all 
the  literature  prizes  of  the  school,  and,  in  addition  to  his 
proper  work,  imposed  on  himself  such  voluntary  tasks  as 
the  translation  of  the  whole  JEneid  in  prose.     He  devoured 
all  the  books  of  history,  travel,  and  fiction  in  the  school 
library,  and  was  forever  borrowing  more  from  the  friend 
who  tells  the  story.     "  In  my  mind's  eye  I  now  see  him  at 
supper,  sitting  back  on  the  form  from  the  table,  holding 
the  folio  volume  of  Burnet's  'History  of  his  Own  Time' 
between  himself  and  the  table,  eating  his  meal  from  beyond 
it.     This  work,  and  Leigh  Hunt's  '  Examiner  '—which  my 
father  took  in,  and  I  used  to  lend  to  Keats— no  doubt  laid 
the  foundation  of  his  love  of  civil  and  religious  liberty." 


10  KEATS.  [chap. 

Bat  the  books  which  Keats  read  with  the  greatest  eager- 
ness of  all  were  books  of  ancient  mythology,  and  he  seemed 
literally  to  learn  by  heart  the  contents  of  Tookc's  Panthe- 
on, Lempriere's  Dictionary,  and  the  school  abridgment  by 
Tindal  of  Spence's  Polymetis — the  first  the  most  foolish 
and  dull,  the  last  the  most  scholarly  and  polite,  of  the  vari- 
ous handbooks  in  which  the  ancient  fables  were  presented 
in  those  days  to  the  apprehension  of  youth. 

Trouble  fell  upon  Keats  in  the  midst  of  these  ardent 
studies  of  his  latter  school-days.  His  mother  had  been  for 
some  time  in  failing  health.  First  she  was  disabled  by 
chronic  rheumatism,  and  at  last  fell  into  a  rapid  consump- 
tion, which  carried  her  off  in  February,  1810.  We  are  told 
with  what  devotion  her  eldest  boy  attended  her  sick  bed, 
— "  he  sat  up  whole  nights  with  her  in  a  great  chair,  would 
suffer  nobody  to  give  her  medicine,  or  even  cook  her  food, 
but  himself,  and  read  novels  to  her  in  her  intervals  of  ease  " 
— and  how  bitterly  he  mourned  for  her  when  she  was  gone 
— "  he  gave  way  to  such  impassioned  and  prolonged  grief 
(hiding  himself  in  a  nook  under  the  master's  desk)  as 
awakened  the  liveliest  pity  and  sympathy  in  all  who  saw 
him."  In  the  July  following,  Mrs.  Jennings,  being  desirous 
to  make  the  best  provision  she  could  for  her  orphan  grand- 
children, "in  consideration  of  the  natural  love  and  affection 
which  she  had  for  them,"  executed  a  deed  putting  them 
under  the  care  of  two  guardians,  to  whom  she  made  over, 
to  be  held  in  trust  for  their  benefit  from  the  date  of  the 
instrument,  the  chief  part  of  the  property  which  she  derived 
from  her  late  husband  under  his  will.1  The  guardians  were 
Mr.  Rowland  Sandell,  merchant,  and  Mr.  Ptichard  Abbey,  a 
wholesale  tea-dealer  in  Pancras  Lane.     Mrs.  Jennings  sur- 

1  Rawlings  v.  Jennings.     See  Appendix,  p.  2 ID. 


i.]  LIFE   AS  SURGEON'S  APPRENTICE.  11 

vived  the  execution  of  this  deed  more  than  four  years,1  but 
Mr.  Abbey,  with  the  consent  of  his  co-trustee,  seems  at  once 
to  have  taken  up  all  the  responsibilities  of  the  trust.  Un- 
der his  authority  John  Keats  was  withdrawn  from  school 
at  the  close  of  this  same  year  1810,  when  he  was  just  fif- 
teen, and  made  to  put  on  harness  for  the  practical  work  of 
life.  With  no  opposition,  so  far  as  we  learn,  on  his  own 
part,  he  was  bound  apprentice  for  a  term  of  five  years  to  a 
surgeon  at  Edmonton  named  Hammond.  The  only  pict- 
ure we  have  of  him  in  this  capacity  has  been  left  by  R.  II. 
Home,  the  author  of  Orion,  who  came  as  a  small  boy  to 
the  Enfield  school  just  after  Keats  had  left  it.  One  day 
in  winter  Mr.  Hammond  had  driven  over  to  attend  the 
school,  and  Keats  with  him.  Keats  was  standing  with  his 
head  sunk  in  a  brown  study,  holding-  the  horse,  when  some 
of  the  boys,  who  knew  his  school  reputation  for  pugnacity, 
dared  Home  to  throw  a  snowball  at  him,  which  Home 
did,  hitting  Keats  in  the  back,  and  then  taking  headlong 
to  his  heels,  to  his  surprise  got  off  scot  free.2  Keats 
during  his  apprenticeship  used  on  his  own  account  to  be 
often  to  and  fro  between  the  Edmonton  surgery  and  the 
Enfield  school.  His  newly  awakened  passion  for  the 
pleasures  of  literature  and  the  imagination  was  not  to  be 
stifled,  and  whenever  he  could  spare  time  from  his  work, 
he  plunged  back  into  his  school  occupations  of  reading 
and  translating.  He  finished  at  this  time  his  translation 
of  the  xEneid,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  walking  over 
to  Enfield  once  a  week  or  oftener  to  see  his  friend 
Cowden    Clarke,  and   to  exchange   books  and  "  travel  in 

1  Mrs.  Alice  Jennings  was  buried  at  St.  Stephen's,  Coleman  Street, 
December  19, 1814,  aged  78.  (Communication  from  the  Rev.  J.  W. 
Pratt,  M.A.) 

*  I  owe  this  anecdote  to  Mr.  Gosse,  who  had  it  direct  from  Ilorne. 


12  KEATS.  [chap. 

the  realms  of  gold"  with  him.  In  summer  weather  the 
two  would  sit  in  a  shady  arbour  in  the  old  school  garden, 
the  elder  reading  poetry  to  the  younger,  and  enjoying 
his  looks  and  exclamations  of  enthusiasm.  On  a  momen- 
tous day  for  Keats,  Cowden  Clarke  introduced  him  for  the 
first  time  to  Spenser,  reading  him  the  E})ithalamium  in 
the  afternoon,  and  lending  him  the  Faerie  Qiceene,  to  take 
away  the  same  evening.  It  has  been  said,  and  trulypCltat ' 
no  one  who  has  not  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  attracted 
to  that  poem  in  boyhood  can  ever  completely  enjoy  it. 
The  maturer  student,  appreciate  as  he  may  its  inexhaustible 
beauties  and  noble  temper,  can  hardly  fail  to  be  in  some 
degree  put  out  by  its  arbitrary  forms  of  rhyme  and  diction, 
and  wearied  by  its  melodious  redundance,  he  will  perceive 
the  perplexity  and  discontinuousness  of  the  allegory,  and 
the  absence  of  real  and  breathing  humanity,  even  the 
failure  at  times  of  clearness  of  vision  and  strength  of 
grasp,  amidst  all  that  luxuriance  of  decorative  and  sym- 
bolic invention,  and  prodigality  of  romantic  incident 
and  detail.  It  is  otherwise  with  the  uncritical  faculties 
and  greedy  apprehension  of  boyhood.  For  them  there  is 
no  poetical  revelation  like  the  Faerie  Queene,  no  pleasure 
equal  to  that  of  floating  for  the  first  time  along  that  ever- 
buoyant  stream  of  verse,  by  those  shores  and  forests  of 
enchantment,  glades  and  wildernesses  alive  with  glancing 
figures  of  knight  and  lady,  oppressor  and  champion,  mage 
and  Saracen — with  masque  and  combat,  pursuit  and  rescue, 
the  chivalrous  shapes  and  hazards  of  the  woodland,  and 
beauty  triumphant  or  in  distress.  Through  the  new  world 
thus  opened  to  him  Keats  went  ranging  with  delight : 
"  ramping  "  is  Cowden  Clarke's  word ;  he  showed,  moreover^ 
his  own  instinct  for  the  poetical  art  by  fastening  with  crit- 
ical enthusiasm  on  epithets  of  special  felicity  or  power. 


i.]  AWAKENING  TO  POETRY.  13 

For  instance,  says  his  friend,  "  he  hoisted  himself  up,  and 
looked  burly  and  dominant,  as  he  said,  'What  an  image 
that  is — sea-shouldering  whales  /'  "  Spenser  has  been  oft- 
en proved  not  only  a  great  awakener  of  the  love  of  poetry 
in  youth,  but  a  great  fertilizer  of  the  germs  of  original 
poetical  power  where  they  exist;  and  Charles  Brown,  the 
most  intimate  friend  of  Keats  during  two  later  years  of 
his  life,  states  positively  that  it  was  to  the  inspiration  of 
the  Faerie  Queene_  that  his  first  notion  of  attempting  to 
write  was  due.  "  Though  born  to  be  a  poet,  he  was  igno- 
rant of  his  birthright  until  he  had  completed  his  eighteenth 
year.  It  was  the  Faerie  Queene  that  awakened  his  genius. 
In  Spenser's  fairy-land  he  was  enchanted,  breathed  in  a 
new  world,  and  became  another  being;  till,  enamoured  of 
the  stanza,  he  attempted  to  imitate  it,  and  succeeded. 
This  account  of  the  sudden  development  of  his  poetic 
powers  I  first  received  from  his  brothers,  and  afterwards 
from  himself.  This,  his  earliest  attempt,  the  '  Imitation 
of  Spenser,'  is  in  his  first  volume  of  poems,  and  it  is  pecul- 
iarly interesting  to  those  acquainted  with  his  history."  * 
Cowden  Clarke  places  the  attempt  two  years  earlier,  but 
his  memory  for  dates  was,  as  he  owns,  the  vaguest,  and 
we  may  fairly  assume  him  to  have  been  mistaken. 

After  he  had  thus  first  become  conscious  within  him- 
self of  the  impulse  of  poetical  composition,  Keats  went  on 
writino*  occasional  sonnets  and  other  verses ;  secretly  and 
shyly  at  first  like  all  young  poets ;  at  least  it  was  not  until 
two  years  later,  in  the  spring  of  \&}5r  that  he  showed  any- 
thing he  had  written  to  his  friend  and  confidant,  Cowden 
Clarke.  In  the  meantime  a  change  had  taken  place  in  his 
way  of  life.     In  the  summer  or  autumn  of  1814,  more 

1  Houghton  MSS. 


14  KEATS.  [chap. 

than  a  year  before  the  expiration  of  his  term  of  appren^ 
ticeship,  he  had  quarrelled  with  Mr.  Hammond  and  left 
him.  The  cause  of  their  quarrel  is  not  known,  and  Keats's 
own  single  allusion  to  it  is  when,  once  afterwards,  speak- 
ing of  the  periodical  change  and  renewal  of  the  bodily 
tissues,  he  says,  "  Seven  years  ago  it  was  not  this  hand 
which  clenched  itself  at  Hammond."  It  seems  unlikely 
that  the  cause  was  any  neglect  of  duty  on  the  part  of  the 
poet-apprentice,  who  was  not  devoid  of  thoroughness  and 
resolution  in  the  performance  even  of  uncongenial  tasks. 
At  all  events  Mr.  Hammond  allowed  the  indentures  to  be 
cancelled,  and  Keats,  being  now  nearly  nineteen  years  of 
age,  went  to  live  in  London,  and  continue  the  study  of 
his  profession  as  a  student  at  the  hospitals  (then  for  teach- 
ing purposes  united)  of  St.  Thomas's  and  Guy's.  For  the 
first  winter  and  spring  after  leaving  Edmonton  he  lodged 
alone  at  8  Dean  Street,  Borough,  and  then  for  about  a 
year,  in  company  with  some  fellow-students,  over  a  tallow- 
chandler's  shop  in  St.  Thomas's  Street.  Thence  he  went, 
in  the  summer  of  1816,  to  join  his  brothers  in  lodgings  in 
the  Poultry,  over  a  passage  leading  to  the  Queen's  Head 
tavern.  In  the  spring  of  1817  they  all  three  moved  for  a 
short  time  to  76  Chcapside.  Between  these  several  ad- 
dresses in  London  Keats  spent  a  period  of  about  two  years 
and  a  half,  from  the  date  (which  is  not  precisely  fixed)  of 
his  leaving  Edmonton,  in  1814,  until  April,  1817. 

It  was  in  this  interval,  from  his  nineteenth  to  his  twenty- 
second  year,  that  Keats  gave  way  gradually  to  his  growing 
passion  for  poetry.  At  first  he  seems  to  have  worked 
steadily  enough  along  the  lines  which  others  had  marked 
out  for  him.  His  chief  reputation,  indeed,  among  his  fel- 
low-students was  that  of  a  "  cheerful,  crotchety  rhymester," 
much  given  to  scribbling  doggerel  verses  in  his  friends1 


i.]  LIFE  AS  HOSPITAL  STUDENT.  15 

note-books.1  Bat  I  have  before  me  the  MS.  book  in  which 
he  took  down  his  own  notes  of  a  course,  or  at  least  the 
beginning  of  a  course,  of  lectures  on  anatomy,  and  they 
are  not  those  of  a  lax  or  inaccurate  student.  The  only 
sio-ns  of  a  wandering  mind  occur  on  the  margins  of  one 
or  two  pages,  in  the  shape  of  sketches  (rather  prettily 
touched)  of  pansies  and  other  flowers ;  but  the  notes  them- 
selves are  both  full  and  close,  as  far  as  they  qo.  Poetry 
had  indeed  already  become  Keats's  chief  interest,  but  it  is 
clear,  at  the  same  time,  that  he  attended  the  hospitals  and 
did  his  work  regularly,  acquiring  a  fairly  solid  knowledge, 
both  theoretical  and  practical,  of  the  rudiments  of  medical 
and  surgical  science,  so  that  he  was  always  afterwards  able 
to  speak  on  such  subjects  with  a  certain  mastery.  On  the 
26th  of  July,  1815,  he  passed  with  credit  his  examination 
as  licentiate  at  Apothecaries'  Hall.  He  was  appointed  a 
dresser  at  Guy's  under  Mr.  Lucas  on  the  3d  of  March, 
1816,  and  the  operations  which  he  performed  or  assisted 
in  are  said  to  have  proved  him  no  bungler.  But  his  heart 
was  not  in  the  work.  Its  scientific  part  he  could  not  feel 
to  be  a  satisfying  occupation  for  his  thoughts ;  he  knew 
nothing  of  that  passion  of  philosophical  curiosity  in  the 
mechanism  and  mysteries  of  the  human  frame  which  by 
turns  attracted  Coleridge  and  Shelley  towards  the  study  of 
medicine.  The  practical  responsibilities  of  the  profession 
at  the  same  time  weighed  upon  him,  and  he  was  conscious 
of  a  kind  of  absent,  uneasy  wonder  at  his  own  skill.  Voices 
and  visions  that  he  could  not  resist  were  luring  his  spirit 

1  A  specimen  of  such  scribble,  in  the  shape  of  a  fragment  of  ro- 
mance narrative,  composed  in  the  sham  Old-English  of  Rowley,  and 
in  prose,  not  verse,  will  be  found  in  The  Philosophy  of  Mystery,  by 
W.  C.  Dendy  (London,  1841),  p.  99,  and  another,  preserved  by  Mr.  H. 
Stephens,  in  the  Poetical  Works,  ed.  Forman  (1  vol.,  1884),  p.  558. 
2 


16  KEATS.  [chap. 

along  other  paths,  and  once  when  Cowden  Clarke  asked 
him  about  his  prospects  and  feelings  in  regard  to  his  pro- 
fession, he  frankly  declared  his  own  sense  of  his  unfitness 
for  it,  with  reasons  such  as  this,  that  "the  other  day, 
during  the  lecture,  there  came  a  sunbeam  into  the  room, 
and  with  it  a  whole  troop  of  creatures  floating  in  the  ray ; 
and  I  was  off  with  them  to  Oberon  and  fairy-land."  "  My 
last  operation,"  he  once  told  Brown,  "  was  the  opening  of 
a  man's  temporal  artery.  I  did  it  with  the  utmost  nicety, 
but  reflecting  on  what  passed  through  my  mind  at  the 
time,  my  dexterity  seemed  a  miracle,  and  I  never  took  up 
the  lancet  again." 

Keats  at  the  same  time  was  forming  intimacies  with 
other  young  men  of  literary  tastes  and  occupations.  His 
verses  were  beginning  to  be  no  longer  written  with  a  boy's 
secrecy,  but  freely  addressed  to  and  passed  round  among 
his  friends;  some  of  them  attracted  the  notice  and  warm 
approval  of  writers  of  acknowledged  mark  and  standing, 
and  with  their  encouragement  he  had,  about  the  time  of 
his  coming  of  age  (that  is  in  the  winter  of  1816-17),  con- 
ceived the  purpose  of  devoting  himself  to  a  literary  life. 
We  are  not  told  what  measure  of  opposition  he  encoun- 
tered on  the  point  from  Mr.  Abbey,  though  there  is  evi- 
dence that  he  encountered  some.1  Probably  that  gentle- 
man regarded  the  poetical  aspirations  of  his  ward  as  mere 
symptoms  of  a  boyish  fever  which  experience  would  quick- 
ly cure.  There  was  always  a  certain  lack  of  cordiality  in 
his  relations  with  the  three  brothers  as  they  grew  up.  He 
gave  places  in  his  counting-house  successively  to  George 
and  Tom  as  they  left  school,  but  they  both  quitted  him 
after  a  while ;  George,  who  had  his  full  share  of  the  fami- 
ly pride,  on  account  of  slights  experienced  or  imagined  at 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  220. 


i.]  LIFE  AS  HOSPITAL  STUDENT.  1? 

the  bands  of  a  junior  partner ;  Tom  in  consequence  of  a 
settled  infirmity  of  health  which  early  disabled  him  for 
the  practical  work  of  life.  Mr.  Abbey  continued  to  man- 
age the  money  matters  of  the  Keats  family — unskilfully 
enough,  as  will  appear — and  to  do  his  duty  by  them  as  he 
understood  it.  Between  him  and  John  Keats  there  was 
never  any  formal  quarrel.  But  that  young  brilliant  spirit 
could  hardly  have  expected  a  responsible  tea-dealer's  ap- 
proval when  he  yielded  himself  to  the  influences  now  to 
be  described. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Particulars  of  Early  Life  in  London. — Friendships  and  First  Poems. 
— Henry  Stephens. —  Felton  Mathew.  —  Cowden  Clarke. — Leigh 
Hunt:  his  literary  and  personal  influence. — John  Hamilton  Reyn- 
olds.— James  Rice.— Cornelius  Webb. — Shelley. — Haydon. — Jo- 
seph Severn. — Charles  Wells. — Other  acquaintances. — Determina- 
tion to  publish.     [1814— April,  1817.] 

When  Keats  moved  from  Dean  Street  to  St.  Thomas's 
Street  in  the  summer  of  1815,  he  at  first  occupied  a  joint 
sitting-room  with  two  senior  students,  to  the  care  of  one 
of  whom  he  had  been  recommended  by  Astley  Cooper.1 
When  they  left  he  arranged  to  live  in  the  same  house  with 
two  other  students  of  his  own  age  named  George  Wilson 
Mackereth  and  Henry  Stephens.  The  latter,  who  was  af- 
terwards a  physician  of  repute  near  St.  Albans,  and  later 
at  Finchley,  has  left  some  interesting  reminiscences  of  the 
time.2  "He  attended  lectures,"  says  Mr.  Stephens  of 
Keats,  "and  went  through  the  usual  routine,  but  he  had 
no  desire  to  excel  in  that  pursuit.  .  .  .  Poetry  was  to  his 
mind  the  zenith  of  all  his  aspirations — the  only  thing 
worthy  the  attention  of  superior  minds — so  he  thought — 
all  other  pursuits  were  mean  and  tame. ...  It  may  readily 
be  imagined  that  this  feeling  was  accompanied  by  a  good 


1  See  C.  L.  Feltoe,  Memorials  of  J.  F.  South  (London,  1884),  p.  81 
Houghto: 
vol.  i.,p.  134 


2  Houghton  MSS.    See  also  Dr.  B.  W.  Richardson  in  the  Asclepiad, 


chap,  il]    HENRY  STEPHENS— FELTON  MATHEW.  19 

deal  of  pride  and  some  conceit,  and  that  amongst  mere 
medical  students  he  would  walk  and  talk  as  one  of  the 
gods  might  be  supposed  to  do  when  mingling  with  mor- 
tals." On  the  whole,  it  seems  "  Little  Keats  "  was  popular 
among  his  fellow-students,  although  subject  to  occasional 
teasing  on  account  of  his  pride,  his  poetry,  and  even  his 
birth  as  the  son  of  a  stable-keeper.  Mr.  Stephens  goes  on 
to  tell  how  he  himself  and  a  student  of  St.  Bartholomew's, 
a  merry  fellow  called  Newmarch,  having  some  tincture  of 
poetry,  were  singled  out  as  companions  by  Keats,  with 
whom  they  used  to  discuss  and  compare  verses,  Keats  tak- 
ing always  the  tone  of  authority,  and  generally  disagreeing 
with  their  tastes.  He  despised  Pope  and  admired  Byron, 
but  delighted  especially  in  Spenser,  caring  more  in  poetry 
for  the  beauty  of  imagery,  description,  and  simile  than  for 
the  interest  of  action  or  passion.  Newmarch  used  some- 
times to  laugh  at  Keats  and  his  flights — to  the  indignation 
of  his  brothers,  who  came  often  to  see  him,  and  treated 
him  as  a  person  to  be  exalted,  and  destined  to  exalt  the 
family  name.  "Questions  of  poetry  apart,"  continues  Mr. 
Stephens,  "  he  was  habitually  gentle  and  pleasant,  and  in  his 
life  steady  and  well-behaved  —  his  absolute  devotion  to 
poetry  prevented  his  having  any  other  taste  or  indulging 
in  any  vice."  Another  companion  of  Keats's  early  Lon- 
don days  who  sympathized  with  his  literary  tastes  was  a 
certain  George  Felton  Mathew,  the  son  of  a  tradesman 
whose  family  showed  the  young  medical  student  some 
hospitality.  "Keats  and  I,"  wrote,  in  1848,  Mr.  Mathew 
— then  a  supernumerary  official  on  the  Poor-Law  Board, 
struggling  meekly  under  the  combined  strain  of  a  precari- 
ous income,  a  family  of  twelve  children,  and  a  turn  for  the 
interpretation  of  prophecy — "  Keats  and  I,  though  about 
the  same  age,  and  both  inclined  to  literature,  were  in  many 


20  KEATS.  [chap. 

respects  as  different  as  two  individuals  could  be.  He  en- 
joyed good  health — a  fine  flow  of  animal  spirits — was  fond 
of  company — could  amuse  himself  admirably  with  the 
frivolities  of  life — and  had  great  confidence  in  himself.  I, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  languid  and  melancholy — fond  of 
repose — thoughtful  beyond  my  years — and  diffident  to  the 
last  degree.  ...  He  was  of  the  sceptical  and  republican 
school — an  advocate  for  the  innovations  which  were  mak- 
ing progress  in  his  time — a  fault-finder  with  everything  es- 
tablished. I,  on  the  other  hand,  hated  controversy  and  dis- 
pute—  dreaded  discord  and  disorder"1 — and  Keats,  our 
good  Mr.  Timorous  farther  testifies,  was  very  kind  and  ami- 
able, always  ready  to  apologize  for  shocking  him.  As  to 
his  poetical  predilections,  the  impression  left  on  Mr.  Ma- 
thew  quite  corresponds  with  that  recorded  by  Mr.  Stephens : 
"  He  admired  more  the  external  decorations  than  felt  the 
deep  emotions  of  the  Muse.  He  delighted  in  leading  you 
through  the  mazes  of  elaborate  description,  but  was  less 
conscious  of  the  sublime  and  the  pathetic.  He  used  to 
spend  many  evenings  in  reading  to  me,  but  I  never  ob- 
served the  tears  nor  the  broken  voice  which  are  indicative 
of  extreme  sensibility." 

The  exact  order  and  chronology  of  Keats's  own  first  ef- 
forts in  poetry  it  is  difficult  to  trace.  They  were  certainly 
neither  precocious  nor  particularly  promising.  The  cir- 
cumstantial account  of  Brown  above  quoted  compels  us  to 
regard  the  lines  In  Imitation  of  Spenser  as  the  earliest  of 
all,  and  as  written  at  Edmonton  about  the  end  of  1813  or 
beginning  of  1814.  They  are  correct  and  melodious,  and 
contain  few  of  those  archaic  or  experimental  eccentricities 
of  diction  which  we  shall  find  abounding  a  little  later  in 
Keats's  work.  Although,  indeed,  the  poets  whom  Keats 
1  Houghton  MSSL 


ii.]  FIRST  POEMS.  21 

loved  the  best,  both  first  and  last,  were  those  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan age,  it  is  clear  that  his  own  earliest  verses  were 
modelled  timidly  on  the  work  of  writers  nearer  his  own 
time.  His  professedly  Spenserian  lines  resemble  not  so 
mucli  Spenser  as  later  writers  who  had  written  in  his  meas- 
ure, and  of  these  not  the  latest,  Byron,1  but  rather  such 
milder  minstrels  as  Shenstone,  Thomson,  and  Beattie,  or 
most  of  all,  perhaps,  the  sentimental  Irish  poetess  Mrs. 
Tighe,  whose  Psyche  had  become  very  popular  since  her 
death,  and  by  its  richness  of  imagery,  and  flowing  and 
musical  versification,  takes  a  place,  now  too  little  recognized, 
among  the  pieces  preluding  the  romantic  movement  of  the 
time.  That  Keats  was  familiar  with  this  lady's  work  is 
proved  by  his  allusion  to  it  in  the  lines,  themselves  very 
youthfully  turned  in  the  tripping  manner  of  Tom  Moore, 
which  he  addressed  about  this  time  to  some  ladies  who 
had  sent  him  a  present  of  a  shell.  His  two  elegiac  stan- 
zas On  Death,  assigned  by  George  Keats  to  the  year  1814, 
are  quite  in  an  eighteenth-century  style  and  vein  of  moral- 
izing. Equally  so  is  the  address  To  Hope  of  February, 
1815,  with  its  "relentless  fair"  and  its  personified  abstrac- 
tions, "  fair  Cheerfulness,"  "  Disappointment,  parent  of  De- 
spair," "  that  fiend  Despondence,"  and  the  rest.  And  once 
more  in  the  ode  To  Apollo  of  the  same  date,  the  voice 
with  which  this  young  singer  celebrates  his  Elizabethan 
masters  is  an  echo  not  of  their  own  voice  but  rather  of 
Gray's  : 

"  Thou  biddest  Shakspeare  wave  his  hand, 
And  quickly  forward  spring 

1  What,  for  instance,  can  be  less  Spenserian,  and  at  the  same  time 
less  Byronic,  than — 

"  For  sure  so  fair  a  place  was  never  seen 
Of  all  that  ever  charm'd  romantic  eye  ?" 


22  KEATS.  [chap. 

The  Passions — a  terrific  band — 

And  each  vibrates  the  string 
That  with  its  tyrant  temper  best  accords, 
While  from  their  Master's  lips  pour  forth  the  inspiring  words. 
A  silver  trumpet  Spenser  blows, 

And,  as  its  martial  notes  to  silence  flee, 
From  a  virgin  chorus  flows 

A  hymn  in  praise  of  spotless  Chastity. 
'Tis  still !     Wild  warblings  from  the  iEolian  lyre 
Enchantment  softly  breathe,  and  tremblingly  expire." 

The  pieces  above  cited  are  all  among  the  earliest  of  Keats's 
work,  written  either  at  Edmonton  or  during  the  first  year 
of  his  life  in  London.  To  the  same  class  no  doubt  be- 
longs the  inexpert  and  boyish,  almost  girlish,  sentimental 
sonnet  To  Byron,  and  probably  that  also,  which  is  but  a 
degree  better,  To  Chatterton  (both  only  posthumously 
printed).  The  more  firmly  handled  but  still  mediocre  son- 
net on  Leigh  Hunt's  release  from  prison  brings  us  again  to 
a  fixed  date  and  a  recorded  occasion  in  the  young  poet's 
life.  It  was  on  either  the  2d  or  the  3d  of  February, 
1815,  that  the  brothers  Hunt  were  discharged,  after  serving 
out  the  term  of  imprisonment  to  which  they  had  been  con- 
demned on  the  charge  of  libelling  the  Prince  Regent  two 
years  before.  Young  Cowden  Clarke,  like  so  many  other 
friends  of  letters  and  of  liberty,  had  gone  to  offer  his  re- 
spects to  Leigh  Hunt  in  Surrey  jail,  and  the  acquaintance 
thus  begun  had  warmed  quickly  into  friendship.  Within 
a  few  days  of  Hunt's  release,  Clarke  walked  in  from  En- 
field to  call  on  him  (presumably  at  the  lodging  he  occu- 
pied at  this  time  in  the  Edge  ware  Road).  On  his  return 
Clarke  met  Keats,  who  walked  part  of  the  way  home  with 
him,  and  as  they  parted,  says  Clarke,  "  he  turned  and  gave 
me  the  sonnet  entitled  Written  on  the  day  that  Mr.  Leigh 
Hunt  left  prison.     This  I  feel  to  be  the  first  proof  I  had 


n.]  FIRST  POEMS— COWDEN  CLARKE.  23 

received  of  his  having  committed  himself  in  verse;  and 
how  clearly  do  I  recollect  the  conscious  look  and  hesita- 
tion with  which  he  offered  it !  There  are  some  momen- 
tary glances  by  beloved  friends  that  fade  only  with  life." 

Not  long  afterwards  Cowden  Clarke  left  Enfield,  and 
came  to  settle  in  London.  Keats  found  him  out  in  his 
lodgings  at  Clerkenwell,  and  the  two  were  soon  meeting 
as  often,  and  reading  together  as  eagerly,  as  ever.  One  of 
the  first  books  they  attacked  was  a  borrowed  folio  copy  of 
Chapman's  Homer.  After  a  night's  enthusiastic  study, 
Clarke  found,  when  he  came  down  to  breakfast  the  next 
morning,  that  Keats,  who  had  only  left  him  in  the  small 
hours,  had  already  had  time  to  compose  and  send  him  from 
the  Borough  the  sonnet,  now  so  famous  as  to  be  almost 
hackneyed,  On  First  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer : 

"  Much  have  I  travell'd  in  the  realms  of  gold, 

And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen  ; 

Round  many  "Western  islands  have  I  been 
Which  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  hold. 
Oft  of  one  wide  expanse  had  I  been  told, 

That  deep-brow'd  Homer  ruled  as  his  demesne : 

Yet  did  I  never  breathe  its  pure  serene 
Till  I  heard  Chapman  speak  out  loud  and  bold : 
Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 

When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken ; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific— and  all  his  men 
Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise — 

Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 

The  date  of  the  incident  cannot  be  precisely  fixed,  but  it 
was  when  nights  were  short  in  the  summer  of  1815.  The 
seventh  line  of  the  sonnet  is  an  after-thought :  in  the  orig- 
inal copy  sent  to  Cowden  Clarke  it  stood  more  baldly, 
2*      C 


24  KEATS.  [chap. 

"Yet  could  I  never  tell  what  men  might  mean."  Keats 
here  for  the  first  time  approves  himself  a  poet  indeed. 
The  concluding  sestet  is  almost  unsurpassed,  nor  can  there 
be  a  finer  instance  of  the  alchemy  of  genius  than  the  im- 
age of  the  explorer,  wherein  a  stray  reminiscence  of  school- 
boy reading  (with  a  mistake,  it  seems,  as  to  the  name, 
which  should  be  Balboa  and  not  Cortez,  but  what  does  it 
matter?)  is  converted  into  the  perfection  of  appropriate 
poetry. 

One  of  the  next  services  which  the  ever  zealous  and  affec- 
tionate Cowden  Clarke  did  his  young  friend  was  to  make 
him  personally  known  to  Leigh  Hunt.  The  acquaintance 
carried  with  it  in  the  sequel  some  disadvantages  and  even 
penalties,  but  at  first  was  a  source  of  unmixed  encourage- 
ment and  pleasure.  It  is  impossible  rightly  to  understand 
the  career  of  Keats  if  we  fail  to  realize  the  various  modes 
in  which  it  was  affected  by  his  intercourse  with  Hunt.  The 
latter  was  the  elder  of  the  two  by  eleven  years.  He  was 
the  son,  by  marriage  with  an  American  wife,  of  an  elo- 
quent and  elegant,  self-indulgent  and  thriftless  fashionable 
preacher  of  West  Indian  origin  who  had  chiefly  exercised 
his  vocation  in  the  northern  suburbs  of  London.  Leigh 
Hunt  was  brought  up  at  Christ's  Hospital  about  a  dozen 
years  later  than  Lamb  and  Coleridge,  and  gained  at  sixteen 
some  slight  degree  of  precocious  literary  reputation  with 
a  volume  of  juvenile  poems.  A  few  years  later  he  came 
into  notice  as  a  theatrical  critic,  being  then  a  clerk  in  the 
War  Office,  an  occupation  which  he  abandoned  at  twenty- 
four  (in  1808)  in  order  to  join  his  brother,  John  Hunt,  in 
the  conduct  of  the  Examiner  newspaper.  For  five  years 
the  managers  of  that  journal  helped  to  fight  the  losing 
battle  of  liberalism,  in  those  days  of  Eldon  and  of  Castle- 
reagh,  with  a  dexterous  brisk  audacity,  and  a  perfect  sin- 


il]  LEIGH  HUNT.  25 

cerity,  if  not  profoundness,  of  conviction.  At  last  they 
were  caught  tripping,  and  condemned  to  two  years'  im- 
prisonment for  strictures  ruled  libellous,  and  really  sting- 
ing as  well  as  just,  on  the  character  and  person  of  the 
Prince  Regent.  Leigh  Hunt  bore  himself  in  his  captivity 
with  cheerful  fortitude,  and  issued  from  it  a  sort  of  hero. 
Liberal  statesmen,  philosophers,  and  writers  pressed  to  offer 
him  their  sympathy  and  society  in  prison,  and  his  engag- 
ing presence  and  affluence  of  genial  conversation  charmed 
all  who  were  brought  in  contact  with  him.  Tall,  straight, 
slender,  and  vivacious,  with  curly  black  hair,  bright  coal- 
black  eyes,  and  "  nose  of  taste,"  Leigh  Hunt  was  ever  one 
of  the  most  winning  of  companions,  full  of  kindly  smiles 
and  jests,  of  reading,  gaiety,  and  ideas,  with  an  infinity  of 
pleasant  things  to  say  of  his  own,  yet  the  most  sympathet- 
ic and  deferential  of  listeners.  If  in  some  matters  he  was 
far  too  easy,  and  especially  in  that  of  money  obligations, 
which  he  shrank  neither  from  receiving  nor  conferring — 
only  circumstances  made  him  nearly  always  a  receiver — 
still  men  of  sterner  fibre  than  Hunt  have  more  lightly 
abandoned  graver  convictions  than  his,  and  been  far  less 
ready  to  suffer  for  what  they  believed.  Liberals  could 
not  but  contrast  his  smiling  steadfastness  under  persecu- 
tion with  the  apostasy,  as  in  the  heat  of  the  hour  they  con- 
sidered it,  of  Southey,  Wordsworth,  and  Coleridge.  In 
domestic  life  no  man  was  more  amiable  and  devoted  under 
difficulties,  and  none  was  better  loved  by  his  friends,  or 
requited  them,  so  far  as  the  depth  of  his  nature  went,  with 
a  truer  warmth  and  loyalty.  His  literary  industry  was  in- 
cessant, hardly  second  to  that  of  Southey  himself.  He 
had  the  liveliest  faculty  of  enjoyment,  coupled  with  a  sin- 
gular quickness  of  intellectual  apprehension  for  the  points 
and   qualities   of  what  he  enjoyed ;  and  for  the  gentler 


26  KEATS.  [chap. 

pleasures,  graces,  and  luxuries  (to  use  a  word  lie  loved)  of 
literature  he  is  the  most  accomplished  of  guides  and  in- 
terpreters. His  manner  in  criticism  has  at  its  best  an  easy 
penetration  and  flowing  unobtrusive  felicity  most  remote 
from  those  faults  to  which  Coleridge  and  De  Quincey,  with 
their  more  philosophic  powers  and  method,  were  subject, 
the  faults  of  pedantry  and  effort.  The  infirmity  of  Leigh 
Hunt's  style  is  of  an  opposite  kind.  "  Incomparable,"  ac- 
cording to  Lamb's  well-known  phrase,  "  as  a  fire-side  com- 
panion," it  was  his  misfortune  to  carry  too  much  of  the 
fire-side  tone  into  literature,  and  to  affect  both  in  prose 
and  verse,  but  much  more  in  the  latter,  an  air  of  chatty 
familiarity  and  ease  which  passes  too  easily  into  Cockney 
pertness. 

A  combination  of  accidents,  political,  personal,  and  lit- 
erary, caused  this  writer  of  amiable  memory  and  second- 
rate  powers  to  exercise,  about  the  time  of  which  we  are 
writing,  a  determining  influence  both  on  the  work  and  the 
fortunes  of  stronger  men.  And  first  of  his  influence  on 
their  work.  He  was  as  enthusiastic  a  student  of  "  our 
earlier  and  nobler  school  of  poetry  "  as  Coleridge  or  Lamb, 
and  though  he  had  more  appreciation  than  they  of  the 
characteristic  excellences  of  the  "  French  school,"  the  school 
of  polished  artifice  and  restraint  which  had  come  in  since 
Dryden,  he  was  not  less-  bent  on  its  overthrow,  and  on  the 
return  of  English  poetry  to  the  paths  of  nature  and  free- 
dom. But  he  had  his  own  conception  of  the  manner  in 
which  this  return  should  be  effected.  He  did  not  admit 
that  Wordsworth  with  his  rustic  simplicities  and  his  re- 
cluse philosophy  had  solved  the  problem.  "It  was  his 
intention,"  he  wrote  in  prison, "  by  the  beginning  of  next 
year  to  bring  out  a  piece  of  some  length  ...  in  which  he 
would  attempt  to  reduce  to  practice  his  own  ideas  of  what 


ii.]  LEIGH  HUNT:   HIS  LITERARY  INFLUENCE.  27 

is  natural  in  style,  and  of  the  various  and  legitimate  har- 
mony of  the  English  heroic."  The  result  of  this  intention 
was  the  Story  of  Rimini,  begun  before  his  prosecution  and 
published  a  year  after  his  release,  in  February  or  March, 
1816.  "With  the  endeavour,"  so  he  repeated  himself  in 
the  preface,  "  to  recur  to  a  freer  spirit  of  versification,  I 
have  joined  one  of  still  greater  importance — that  of  hav- 
ing, a  free  and  idiomatic  cast  of  language." 

In  versification  Hunt's  aim  was  to  bring  back  into  use 
the  earlier  form  of  the  rhymed  English  decasyllabic  or 
"heroic"  couplet.  The  innovating  poets  of  the  time  had 
abandoned  this  form  of  verse  (Wordsworth  and  Coleridge 
using  it  only  in  their  earliest  efforts,  before  1796);  while 
the  others  who  still  employed  it,  as  Campbell,  Rogers, 
Crabbe,  and  Byron,  adhered,  each  in  his  manner,  to  the  is- 
olated couplet  and  hammering  rhymes  with  which  the 
English  ear  had  been  for  more  than  a  century  exclusively 
familiar.  The  two  contrasted  systems  of  handling  the 
measure  may  best  be  understood  if  we  compare  the 
rhythm  of  a  poem  written  in  it  to  one  of  those  designs  in 
hangings  or  wall-papers  which  are  made  up  of  two  differ- 
ent patterns  in  combination  :  a  rigid  or  geometrical  ground 
pattern,  with  a  second  flowing  or  free  pattern  winding  in 
and  out  of  it.  The  regular  or  ground  pattern,  dividing 
the  field  into  even  spaces,  will  stand  for  the  fixed  or  strict- 
ly metrical  divisions  of  the  verse  into  equal  pairs  of  rhym- 
ing lines ;  while  the  flowing  or  free  pattern  stands  for  its 
other  divisions — dependent  not  on  metre  but  on  the  sense 
— into  clauses  and  periods  of  variable  length  and  struct- 
ure. Under  the  older  system  of  versification  the  sentence 
or  period  had  been  allowed  to  follow  its  own  laws,  with  a 
movement  untrammelled  by  that  of  the  metre;  and  the 
beauty  of  the  result  depended  upon  the  skill  and  feeling 


28  KEATS.  [CHAP. 

with  which  this  free  element  of  the  pattern  was  made  to 
play  about  and  interweave  itself  with  the  fixed  element, 
the  flow  and  divisions  of  the  sentence  now  crossing  and 
now  coinciding  with  those  of  the  metre,  the  sense  now 
drawing  attention  to  the  rhyme  and  now  withholding  it. 
For  examples  of  this  system  and  of  its  charm  we  have 
only  to  turn  at  random  to  Chaucer : 

"  I-clothed  was  sche  fresh  for  to  devyse. 
Hir  yelwe  hair  was  browded  in  a  tresse, 
Byhynde  her  bale,  a  yerde  long,  I  gesse, 
And  in  the  garden  as  the  sonne  upriste 
She  walketh  up  and  down,  and  as  hir  liste 
She  gathereth  floures,  party  white  and  reede, 
To  make  a  sotil  garland  for  here  heede, 
And  as  an  aungel  hevenlyche  sche  song." 

Chaucer's  conception  of  the  measure  prevails  through- 
out the  Elizabethan  age,  but  not  exclusively  or  uniform ly. 
Some  poets  are  more  inobservant  of  the  metrical  division 
than  he,  and  keep  the  movement  of  their  periods  as  inde- 
pendent of  it  as  possible,  closing  a  sentence  anywhere 
rather  than  with  the  close  of  the  couplet,  and  making  use 
constantly  of  the  enjambement,  or  way  of  letting  the  sense 
flow  over  from  one  line  to  another,  without  pause  or  em- 
phasis on  the  rhyme-word.  Others  show  an  opposite  ten- 
dency, especially  in  epigrammatic  or  sententious  passages, 
to  clip  their  sentences  to  the  pattern  of  the  metre,  fitting 
single  propositions  into  single  lines  or  couplets,  and  letting- 
the  stress  fall  regularly  on  the  rhyme.  This  principle 
gradually  gained  ground  during  the  seventeenth  century, 
as  every  one  knows,  and  prevails  strongly  in  the  w^ork  of 
Dryden.  But  Dryden  has  two  methods. which  he  freely 
employs  for  varying  the  monotony  of  his  couplets :  in  se- 


il]  LEIGH  HUNT:    HIS  LITERARY  INFLUENCE.  29 

rious  narrative  or  didactic  verse,  the  use  of  the  triplet  and 
the  Alexandrine,  thus:         ' 

"  Full  bowls  of  wine,  of  honey,  milk,  and  blood 
Were  poured  upon  the  pile  of  burning  wood, 
And  hissing  flames  receive,  and  hungry  lick  the  food. 
Then  thrice  the  mounted  squadrons  ride  around 
The  fire,  and  Arcite's  name  they  thrice  resound  : 
'  Hail  and  f life  well,'  they  shouted  thrice  amain, 
Thrice  facing  to  the  left,  and  thrice  they  turned  again — " 

and  in  lively  colloquial  verse  the  use,  not  uncommon  also 
with  the  Elizabethans,  of  disyllabic  rhymes: 

"  I  come,  kind  gentlemen,  strange  news  to  tell  ye ; 
I  am  the  ghost  of  poor  departed  Nelly. 
Sweet  ladies,  be  not  frighted  ;  I'll  be  civil ; 
I'm  what  I  was,  a  little  harmless  devil." 

In  the  hands  of  Pope,  the  poetical  legislator  of  the  fol- 
lowing century,  these  expedients  are  discarded,  and  the 
fixed  and  purely  metrical  element  in  the  design  is  suffered 
to  regulate  and  control  the  other  element  entirely,  The  sen- 
tence-structure loses  its  freedom,  and  periods  and  clauses, 
instead  of  being  allowed  to  develop  themselves  at  their 
ease,  are  compelled  mechanically  to  coincide  with  and  re- 
peat the  metrical  divisions  of  the  verse.  To  take  a  famous 
instance,  and  from  a  passage  not  sententious,  but  fanciful 
and  discursive : 

"  Some  in  the  fields  of  purest  aether  play, 
And  bask  and  whiten  in  the  blaze  of  day. 
Some  guide  the  course  of  wand'ring  orbs  on  high, 
Or  roll  the  planets  through  the  boundless  sky. 
Some  less  refined,  beneath  the  moon's  pale  light 
Pursue  the  stars  that  shoot  across  the  night, 


30  KEATS.  [chap. 

Or  seek  the  mists  in  grosser  air  below, 
Or  dip  their  pinions  in  the  painted  bow, 
Or  brew  fierce  tempests  on  the  wintry  main, 
Or  o'er  the  glebe  distil  the  kindly  rain." 

Leigh  Hunt's  theory  was  that  Pope,  with  all  his  skill, 
had  spoiled  instead  of  perfecting  his  instrument,  and  that 
the  last  true  master  of  the  heroic  couplet  had  been  Dry- 
den,  on  whom  the  verse  of  Rimini  is  avowedly  modelled. 
The  result  is  an  odd  blending  of  the  grave  and  the  collo- 
quial cadences  of  Dryden,  without  his  characteristic  nerve 
and  energy  in  either : 

"  The  prince,  at  this,  would  bend  on  her  an  eye 
Cordial  enough,  and  kiss  her  tenderly ; 
Nor,  to  say  truly,  was  he  slow  in  common 
To  accept  the  attentions  of  this  lovely  woman ; 
But  the  meantime  he  took  no  generous  pains, 
By  mutual  pleasing,  to  secure  his  gains ; 
He  entered  not,  in  turn,  in  her  delights, 
Her  books,  her  flowers,  her  taste  for  rural  sights ; 
Nay,  scarcely  her  sweet  singing  minded  he 
Unless  his  pride  was  roused  by  company  ; 
Or  when  to  please  him,  after  martial  play, 
She  strained  her  lute  to  some  old  fiery  lay 
Of  fierce  Orlando,  or  of  Ferumbras, 
Or  Ryan's  cloak,  or  how  by  the  red  grass 
In  battle  you  might  know  where  Richard  was." 

It  is  usually  said  that  to  the  example  thus  set  by  Leigh 
Hunt  in  Rimini  is  due  the  rhythmical  form  alike  of  En- 
dymion  and  Epipsychidion,  of  Keats's  Epistles  to  his 
friends  and  Shelley's  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne.  Certainly 
the  Epistles  of  Keats,  both  as  to  sentiment  and  rhythm, 
are  very  much  in  Hunt's  manner.  But  the  earliest  of 
them,  that  to  G.  F.  Mathew,  is  dated  November,  1815,  when 


il]  LEIGH  HUNT:   HIS  LITERARY  INFLUENCE.  31 

Rimini  was  not  yet  published,  and  when  it  appears  Keats 
did  not  yet  know  Hunt  personally.  He  may,  indeed,  have 
known  his  poem  in  MS.  through  Clarke  or  others ;  or  the 
likeness  of  his  work  to  Hunt's  may  have  arisen  indepen- 
ently :  as  to  style,  from  a  natural  affinity  of  feeling ;  and 
as  to  rhythm,  from  a  familiarity  with  the  disyllabic  rhyme 
and  the  "  overflow  "  as  used  by  some  of  the  Elizabethan 
writers,  particularly  by  Spenser  in  Mother  Hubbard's  Tale, 
and  by  Browne  in  Britannia's  Pastorals.  At  all  events 
the  appearance  of  Rimini  tended  unquestionably  to  en- 
courage and  confirm  him  in  his  practice. 

As  to  Hunt's  success  with  his  "ideas  of  what  is  natural 
in  style,"  and  his  "  free  and  idiomatic  cast  of  language  "  to 
supersede  the  styles  alike  of  Pope  and  Wordsworth,  the 
specimen  of  his  which  we  have  given  is  perhaps  enough. 
The  taste  that  guided  him  so  well  in  appreciating  the  works 
of  others  deserted  him  often  in  original  composition,  but 
nowhere  so  completely  as  in  Rimini.  The  piece,  indeed,  is 
not  without  agreeable  passages  of  picturesque  colour  and 
description,  but  for  the  rest  the  pleasant  creature  does  but 
exaggerate  in  this  poem  the  chief  foible  of  his  prose,  re- 
doubling his  vivacious  airs  where  they  are  least  in  place, 
and  handling  the  great  passions  of  the  theme  with  a  tea- 
party  manner  and  vocabulary  that  are  intolerable.  Con- 
temporaries, welcoming  as  a  relief  any  departure  from  the 
outworn  poetical  conventions  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
found,  indeed,  something  to  praise  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Rimini, 
and  ladies  are  said  to  have  wept  over  the  sorrows  of  the 
hero  and  heroine ;  but  what,  one  can  only  ask,  must  be 
the  sensibilities  of  the  human  being  who  can  endure  to 
hear  the  story  of  Paolo  and  Francesca — Dante's  Paolo  and 
Francesca  —  diluted  through  four  cantos  in  a  style  like 
this?— 


32  KEATS.  [chap. 

"  What  need  I  tell  of  lovely  lips  and  eyes, 
A  clipsome  waist,  and  bosom's  balmy  rise  ? — " 

"How  charming,  would  he  think,  to  see  her  here, 
How  heightened  then,  and  perfect  would  appear 
The  two  divinest  things  the  world  has  got, 
A  lovely  woman  in  a  rural  spot." 

When  Keats  and  Shelley,  with  their  immeasurably  finer 
poetical  gifts  and  instincts,  successively  followed  Leigh 
Hunt  in  the  attempt  to  add  a  familiar  lenity  of  style  to 
variety  of  movement  in  this  metre,  Shelley,  it  need  not  be 
said,  was  in  no  danger  of  falling  into  any  such  underbred 
strain  as  this ;  but  Keats  at  first  falls,  or  is  near  falling, 
into  it  more  than  once. 

Next  as  to  the  influence  which  Leigh  Hunt  involuntarily 
exercised  on  his  friends'  fortunes,  and  their  estimation  by 
the  world.  We  have  seen  how  he  found  himself,  in  pris- 
on, and  for  some  time  after  his  release,  a  kind  of  political 
hero  on  the  liberal  side,  a  part  for  which  nature  had  by  no 
means  fitted  him.  This  was  in  itself  enough  to  mark  him 
out  as  a  special  butt  for  Tory  vengeance ;  yet  that  ven- 
geance would  hardly  have  been  so  inveterate  as  it  was  but 
for  other  secondary  causes.  During  his  imprisonment 
Leigh  Hunt  had  reprinted  from  the  Reflector,  with  notes 
and  additions,  an  airily  presumptuous  trifle  in  verse  called 
the  Feast  of  the  Poets,  which  he  had  written  about  two 
years  before.  In  it  Apollo  is  represented  as  convoking 
the  contemporary  British  poets,  or  pretenders  to  the  poet- 
ical title,  to  a  session,  or  rather  to  a  supper.  Some  of 
those  who  present  themselves  the  god  rejects  with  scorn, 
others  he  cordially  welcomes,  others  he  admits  with  reserve 
and  admonition.  Moore  and  Campbell  fare  the  best; 
Southey  and  Scott  are  accepted,  but  with  reproof;  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth  chidden  and  dismissed.     The  criticisms 


ii.]  LEIGH  HUNT:   HIS  LITERARY  INFLUENCE.  33 

are  not  more  short-sighted  than  those  even  of  just  and 
able  men  commonly  are  on  their  contemporaries.  The 
bitterness  of  the  "  Lost  Leader  "  feeling  to  which  we  have 
,  referred  accounts  for  much  of  Hunt's  disparagement  of 
the  Lake  writers,  while  in  common  with  all  liberals  he  was 
prejudiced  against  Scott  as  a  conspicuous  high  Tory  and 
friend  to  kings.  But  he  quite  acknowledged  the  genius, 
while  he  condemned  the  defection,  and  also  what  he 
thought  the  poetical  perversities,  of  Wordsworth.  His 
treatment  of  Scott,  on  the  other  hand,  is  idly  flippant  and 
patronising.  Now  it  so  happened  that  of  the  two  cham- 
pions who  were  soon  after  to  wield,  one  the  bludgeon, 
and  the  other  the  dagger,  of  Tory  criticism  in  Edinburgh, 
— I  mean  Wilson  and  Lockhart — Wilson  was  the  cordial 
friend  and  admirer  of  Wordsworth,  and  Lockhart  a  man 
of  many  hatreds  but  one  great  devotion,  and  that  devotion 
was  to  Scott.  Hence  a  part  at  least  of  the  peculiar  and,  as 
it  might  seem,  paradoxical  rancour  with  which  the  gentle 
Hunt,  and  Keats  as  his  friend  and  supposed  follower,  were 
by-and-bye  to  be  persecuted  in  Blackwood. 

To  go  back  to  the  point  at  which  Hunt  and  Keats  first 
became  known  to  each  other.  Cowden  Clarke  began  by 
carrying  up  to  Hunt,  who  had  now  moved  from  the  Edge- 
ware  Road  to  a  cottage  in  the  Yale  of  Health  at  Ilamp- 
stead,  a  few  of  Keats's  poems  in  manuscript.  Horace  Smith 
was  with  Hunt  when  the  young  poet's  work  was  shown 
him.  Both  were  eager  in  its  praises,  and  in  questions  con- 
cerning the  person  and  character  of  the  author.  Cowden 
Clarke  at  Hunt's  request  brought  Keats  to  call  on  him 
soon  afterwards,  and  has  left  a  vivid  account  of  their  pleas- 
ant welcome  and  conversation.  The  introduction  seems 
to  have  taken  place  early  in  the  spring  of  181G.1  Keats 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  220. 


34  KEATS.  [chap. 

immediately  afterwards  became  intimate  in  the  Hampstead 
household,  and  for  the  next  year  or  two  Hunt's  was  the 
strongest  intellectual  influence  to  which  he  was  subject. 
So  far  as  opinions  were  concerned,  those  of  Keats  had  al- 
ready, as  we  have  seen,  been  partly  formed  in  boyhood 
by  Leigh  Hunt's  writings  in  the  Examiner.  Hunt  was  a 
confirmed  sceptic  as  to  established  creeds,  and  supplied 
their  place  with  a  private  gospel  of  cheerfulness,  or  system 
of  sentimental  optimism,  inspired  partly  by  his  own  sunny 
temperament,  and  partly  by  the  hopeful  doctrines  of  eigh- 
teenth-century philosophy  in  France.  Keats  shared  the 
natural  sympathy  of  generous  youth  for  Hunt's  liberal  and 
optimistic  view  of  things,  and  he  had  a  mind  naturally 
unapt  for  dogma — ready  to  entertain  and  appreciate  any 
set  of  ideas  according  as  his  imagination  recognised  their 
beauty  or  power,  he  could  never  wed  himself  to  any  as 
representing  ultimate  truth.  In  matters  of  poetic  feeling 
and  fancy  Keats  and  Hunt  had  not  a  little  in  common. 
Both  alike  were  given  to  "  luxuriating"  somewhat  effusive- 
ly and  fondly  over  the  "  deliciousness  "  of  whatever  they 
liked  in  art,  books,  or  nature.  To  the  e very-day  pleasures 
of  summer  and  the  English  fields  Hunt  brought  in  a  lower 
degree  the  same  alertness  of  perception,  and  acuteness  of 
sensuous  and  imaginative  enjoyment,  which  in  Keats  were 
intense  beyond  parallel.  In  his  lighter  and  shallower 
way  Hunt  also  felt  with  Keats  the  undying  charm  of  classic 
fable,  and  w7as  scholar  enough  to  produce  about  this  time 
some  agreeable  translations  of  the  Sicilian  pastorals,  and 
some,  less  adequate,  of  Homer.  The  poets  Hunt  loved 
best  were  Ariosto  and  the  other  Italian  masters  of  the  chiv- 
alrous-fanciful epic  style;  and  in  English  he  was  devoted 
to  Keats's  own  favourite,  Spenser. 

The  name  of  Spenser  is  often  coupled  with  that  of  "Lib- 


ii.]  LEIGH  HUNT:   HIS  LITERARY  INFLUENCE.  35 

ertas,"  "  the  lov'd  Libertas,"  meaning  Leigli  Hunt,  in  the 
verses  written  by  Keats  at  this  time.  He  attempts  in 
some  of  these  verses  to  embody  the  spirit  of  the  Fairie 
Queene  in  the  metre  of  Rimini,  and  in  others  to  express 
in  the  same  form  the  pleasures  of  nature  as  he  felt  them 
in  straying  about  the  beautiful,  then  rural,  Hampstead 
woods  and  slopes.  In  the  summer  of  1816  he  seems  to 
have  spent  a  good  deal  of  his  time  at  the  Yale  of  Health, 
where  a  bed  was  made  up  for  him  in  the  library.  In  one 
poem  he  dilates  at  length  on  the  associations  suggested  by 
the  busts  and  knick-knacks  in  the  room ;  and  the  sonnet 
beginning,  "Keen,  fitful  gusts  are  whispering  here  and 
there,"  records  pleasantly  his  musings  as  he  walked  home 
from  his  friend's  house  one  night  in  winter.  We  find  him 
presenting  Hunt  with  a  crown  of  ivy,  and  receiving  a  set 
of  sonnets  from  him  in  return.  Or  they  would  challenge 
each  other  to  the  composition  of  rival  pieces  on  a  chosen 
theme.  Cowden  Clarke,  in  describing  one  such  occasion 
in  December,  1816,  when  they  each  wrote  to  time  a  sonnet 
on  the  Grasshopper  and  Cricket,  has  left  us  a  pleasant  pict- 
ure of  their  relations  : 

"  The  event  of  the  after-scrutiny  was  one  of  many  such  occur- 
rences which  have  riveted  the  memory  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  my  affec- 
tionate regard  and  admiration  for  unaffected  generosity  and  perfectly 
unpretentious  encouragement.     His  sincere  look  of  pleasure  at  the 

first  line — 

"  '  The  poetry  of  earth  is  never  dead.' 

1  Such  a  prosperous  opening !'  he  said ;  and  when  he  came  to  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  lines — 

"  '  On  a  lone  winter  morning,  when  the  frost 
Hath  wrought  a  silence ' — 

'  Ah,  that's  perfect !  Bravo  Keats  !'  And  then  he  went  on  in  a  dila- 
tation on  the  dumbness  of  Nature  during  the  season's  suspension  and 
torpidity." 


36  KEATS.  [chap, 

Through  Leigh  Hunt  Keats  was  before  long  introduced 
to  a  number  of  congenial  spirits.  Among  them  he  at- 
tached himself  especially  to  one  John  Hamilton  Reynolds, 
a  poetic  aspirant  who,  though  a  year  younger  than  him- 
self, had  preceded  him  with  his  first  literary  venture. 
Reynolds  was  born  at  Shrewsbury,  and  his  father  settled 
afterwards  in  London  as  writing-master  at  the  Blue  Coat 
School.  He  lacked  health  and  energy,  but  has  left  the 
reputation  of  a  brilliant  playful  wit,  and  the  evidence  of 
a  charming  character  and  no  slight  literary  talent.  He 
held  a  clerkship  in  an  Insurance  office,  and  Jived  in  Little 
Britain  with  his  family,  including  three  sisters  with  whom 
Keats  was  also  intimate,  and  the  eldest  of  whom  after- 
wards married  Thomas  Hood.  His  earliest  poems  show 
him  inspired  feelingly  enough  with  the  new  romance  and 
nature,  sentiment  of  the  time.  One,  Safte,  is  an  indifferent 
imitation  of  Byron  in  his  then  fashionable  Oriental  vein  * 
much  better  work  appears  in  a  volume  published  in  the 
year  of  Keats's  death,  and  partly  prompted  by  the  writer's 
relations  with  him.  In  a  lighter  strain  Reynolds  wrote  a 
musical  entertainment  which  was  brought  out  in  1819  at 
what  is  now  the  Lyceum  theatre,  and  about  the  same  time 
offended  Wordsworth  with  an  anticipatory  parody  of  Pe- 
ter Bell,  which  Byron  assumed  to  be  the  work  of  Moore. 
In  1822  he  produced  a  spirited  sketch  in  prose  and  verse 
purporting  to  relate,  under  the  name  Peter  Corcoran,  the 
fortunes  of  an  amateur  of  the  prize-ring ;  and  a  little  later, 
in  conjunction  with  Hood,  the.volume  of  anonymous  Odes 
and  Addresses  to  Eminent  Persons  which  Coleridge  on  its 
appearance  declared  confidently  to  be  the  work  of  Lamb. 
But  Reynolds  had  early  given  up  the  hope  of  living  by 
literature,  and  accepted  the  offer  of  an  opening  in  busi- 
ness as  a  solicitor.     In  1818  he  inscribed  a  farewell  son- 


ii.]  JOHN  HAMILTON  REYNOLDS.  37 

net  to  the  Muses  in  a  copy  of  Shakspeare  which  he  gave 
to  Keats,  and  in  1821  he  writes  again, 

"  As  time  increases 
I  give  up  drawling  verse  for  diving  leases." 


In  point  of  fact,  Reynolds  continued  for  years  to  contrib- 
ute to  the  London  Magazine  and  other  reviews,  and  to 
work  occasionally  in  conjunction  with  Hood.  Bat  neither 
in  literature  nor  law  did  he  attain  a  position  commensurate 
with  the  promise  of  his  youth.  Starting  level,  at  the  time 
of  which  we  speak,  with  men  wrho  are  now  in  the  first 
rank  of  fame — with  Keats  and  Shelley — he  died  in  1852 
as  Clerk  of  the  County  at  Newport,  Isle  of  Wight,  and  it 
is  only  in  association  with  Keats  that  his  name  will  live. 
Not  only  was  he  one  of  the  warmest  friends  Keats  had, 
entertaining  from  the  first  an  enthusiastic  admiration  for 
his  powers,  as  a  sonnet  written  early  in  their  acquaintance 
proves,1  but  also  one  of  the  wisest,  and  by  judicious  ad- 
vice more  than  once  saved  him  from  a  mistake.  In  con- 
nection with  the  name  of  Reynolds  among  Keats's  asso- 
ciates must  be  mentioned  that  of  his  inseparable  friend, 
James  Rice,  a  young  solicitor  of  literary  tastes  and  infinite 
jest,  chronically  ailing  or  worse  in  health,  but  always,  in 
Keats's  words,  "coming  on  his  legs  again  like  a  cat;"  ever 
cheerful  and  willing  in  spite  of  his  sufferings,  and  indefat- 
igable in  good  offices  to  those  about  him.  "Dear  noble 
generous  James  Rice,"  records  Dilke — "  the  best,  and  in  his 
quaint  way  one  of  the  wittiest  and  wisest,  men  I  ever 
knew."  Besides  Reynolds,  another  and  more  insignificant 
rhyming  member  of  Hunt's  set,  when  Keats  first  joined 
it,  was  one  Cornelius  Webb,  remembered  now,  if  remem- 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  220. 


38  KEATS.  [chap. 

bered  at  all,  by  Blackwood's  derisory  quotation  of  his  lines 

on —  „ 

"Keats, 

The  Muses'  son  of  promise,  and  what  feats 

He  yet  may  do — " 

as  well  as  by  a  disparaging  allusion  in  one  of  Keats's  own 
later  letters.  He:  disappeared  early  from  the  circle,  but  not 
before  he  had  caught  enough  of  its  spirit  to  write  sonnets 
and  poetical  addresses  which  might  almost  be  taken  for  the 
work  of  Hunt,  or  even  for  that  of  Keats  himself  in  his 
weak  moments.1  For  some  years  afterwards  Webb  served 
as  press-reader  in  the  printing-office  of  Messrs.  Clowes,  be- 
ing charged  especially  with  the  revision  of  the  Quarterly 
proofs.  Towards  1830-1840  he  re-appeared  in  literature 
as  Cornelius  "Webbe,"  author  of  the  Man  about  Town, 
and  other  volumes  of  cheerful  gossiping  Cockney  essays, 
to  which  the  Quarterly  critics  extended  a  patronizing  no- 
tice. 

An  acquaintance  more  interesting  to  posterity  which 
Keats  made  a  few  months  later  at  Leigh  Hunt's  was  that 
of  Shelley,  his  senior  by  only  three  years.  During  the 
harrowing  period  of  Shelley's  life  which  followed  the  sui- 
cide of  his  first  wife — when  his  principle  of  love,  a  law  to 
itself,  had  in  action  entailed  so  dire  a  consequence,  and  his 
obedience  to  his  own  morality  had  brought  him  into  such 
harsh  collision  with  the  world's — the  kindness  and  affec- 
tion of  Leigh  Hunt  were  among  his  chief  consolations. 
After  his  marriage  with  Mary  Godwin  he  flitted  often, 
alone  or  with  his  wife,  between  Great  Mario w  and  Hamp- 
stead,  wrhere  Keats  met  him  early  in  the  spring  of  1817. 
"  Keats,"  says  Hunt,  "  did  not  take  to  Shelley  as  kindly  as 

1  See  particularly  the  Invocation  to  Sleep  in  the  little  volume  of 
Webb's  poems  published  by  the  Olliers  in  1821. 


ii.]  SHELLEY.  39 

Shelley  did  to  him,"  and  adds  the  comment,  "  Keats,  being 
a  little  too  sensitive  on  the  score  of  his  origin,  felt  inclined 
to  see  in  every  man  of  birth  a  sort  of  natural  enemy." 
"  He  was  haughty,  and  had  a  fierce  hatred  of  rank,"  says 
Haydon  in  his  unqualified  way.  Where  his  pride  had  not 
been  aroused  by  anticipation,  Keats  had  a  genius  for  friend- 
ship, but  towards  Shelley  we  find  him  in  fact  maintaining 
a  tone  of  reserve,  and  even  of  something  like  moral  and 
intellectual  patronage,  at  first,  no  doubt,  by  way  of  defence 
against  the  possibility  of  social  or  material  patronage  on 
the  other's  part;  but  he  should  soon  have  learnt  better 
than  to  apprehend  anything  of  the  kind  from  one  whose 
delicacy,  according  to  all  evidence,  was  as  perfect  and  un- 
mistakable as  his  kindness.  Of  Shelley's  kindness  Keats 
had  in  the  sequel  sufficient  proof ;  in  the  meantime,  until 
Shelley  went  abroad  the  following  year,  the  two  met  often 
at  Hunt's  without  becoming  really  intimate.  Pride  and 
social  sensitiveness  apart,  we  can  imagine  that  a  full  under- 
standing was  not  easy  between  them,  and  that  Keats,  with 
his  strong  vein  of  every-day  humanity,  sense,  and  humour, 
and  his  innate  openness  of  mind,  may  well  have  been  as 
much  repelled  as  attracted  by  the  unearthly  ways  and  ac- 
cents of  Shelley,  his  passionate  negation  of  the  world's 
creeds  and  the  world's  law,  and  his  intense  proselytizing 
ardour. 

It  was  also  at  Hunt's  house  that  Keats  for  the  first  time 
met  by  pre-arrangement,  in  the  beginning  of  November, 
1816,  the  painter  Haydon,  whose  influence  soon  became 
hardly  second  to  that  of  Hunt  himself.  Haydon  was  now 
thirty.  He  had  lately  been  victorious  in  one  of  the  two 
great  objects  of  his  ambition,  and  had  achieved  a  tempo- 
rary semblance  of  victory  in  the  other.  He  had  been 
mainly  instrumental  in  getting  the  pre-eminence  of  the 
3       D 


40  KEATS.  [chap. 

Elgin  marbles  among  the  works  of  the  sculptor's  art  ac- 
knowledged in  the  teeth  of  hostile  cliques,  and  their  acqui- 
sition for  the  nation  secured.     This  is  Haydon's  chief  real 
title  to  the  regard  of  posterity.     His  other  and  life-long, 
half  insane  endeavour  was  to  persuade  the  world  to  take 
him  at  his  own  estimate,  as  the  man  chosen  by  Providence 
to  add  the  crown  of  heroic  painting  to  the  other  glories  of 
his  country.     His  indomitable  high-flaming  energy  and  in- 
dustry, his  strenuous  self-reliance,  his  eloquence,  vehemence, 
and  social  gifts,  the  clamour  of  his  self-assertion  and  of  his 
fierce  oppugnancy  against  the  academic  powers,  even  his 
unabashed  claims  for  support  on  friends,  patrons,  and  soci- 
ety at  large,  had  won  for  him  much  convinced  or  half-con- 
vinced attention  and  encouragement,  both  in  the  world  of 
art  and  letters  and  in  that  of  dilettanteism  and  fashion. 
His  first  two  great  pictures,  "Dentatus"  and  "Macbeth," 
had  been  dubiously  received;  his  last,  the  "Judgment  of 
Solomon,"  with  acclamation;  he   was  now   busy  on  one 
more  ambitious  than  all,  "  Christ's  Entry  into  Jerusalem," 
and  while,  as  usual,  sunk  deep  in  debt,  was  perfectly  confi- 
dent of  glory.     Vain  confidence — for  he  was  in  truth  a 
man  whom  nature  had  endowed,  as  if  maliciously,  with  one 
part  of  the  gifts  of  genius  and  not  the  other.     Its  energy 
and  voluntary  power  he  possessed  completely,  and  no  man 
has  ever  lived  at  a  more  genuinely  exalted  pitch  of  feeling 
and  aspiration.     "  Never,"  wrote  he  about  this  time,  "  have 
I  had  such  irresistible  and  perpetual  urgings   of  future 
greatness.     I  have  been  like  a  man  with  air-balloons  under 
his  arm-pits  and  ether  in  his  soul.     While  I  was  painting, 
walking,  or  thinking,  beaming  flashes  of  energy  followed 
and  impressed  me. .  .  .  They  came  over  me,  and  shot  across 
me,  and  shook  me,  till  I  lifted  up  my  heart  and  thanked 
God."     Cut  for  all  his  sensations  and  conviction  of  power, 


II.]  HAYDON.  41 

the  other  half  of  genius — the  half  which  resides  not  in 
energy  and  will,  but  in  faculties  which  it  is  the  business  of 
energy  and  will  to  apply — was  denied  to  Haydon  ;  its  vital 
gifts  of  choice  and  of  creation,  its  magic  power  of  working 
on  the  materials  offered  it  by  experience,  its  felicity  of 
touch  and  insight,  were  not  in  him.  Except  for  a  stray 
note  here  and  there,  an  occasional  bold  conception,  or  a 
touch  of  craftsmanship  caught  from  greater  men,  the  pict- 
ures with  which  he  exultingly  laid  siege  to  immortality  be- 
long, as  posterity  has  justly  felt,  to  the  kingdom  not  of 
true  heroic  art,  but  of  rodomontade.  Even  in  drawing 
from  the  Elgin  marbles,  Haydon  fails  almost  wholly  to  ex- 
press the  beauties  which  he  enthusiastically  perceived,  and 
loses  every  distinction  and  every  subtlety  of  the  original. 
Very  much  better  is  his  account  of  them  in  words,  as,  in- 
deed, Haydon's  chief  intellectual  power  was  as  an  observer, 
and  his  best  instrument  the  pen.  Readers  of  his  journals 
and  correspondence  know  with  what  fluent,  effective,  if 
often  overcharged,  force  and  vividness  of  style  he  can  relate 
an  experience  or  touch  off  a  character.  But  in  this,  the 
literary  form  of  expression,  also,  as  often  as  he  flies  higher, 
and  tries  to  become  imaginative  and  impressive,  we  find 
only  the  same  self-satisfied  void  turgidity,  and  proof  of  a 
commonplace  mind,  as  in  his  paintings.  Take,  for  instance, 
in  relation  to  Keats  himself,  Haydon's  profound  admoni- 
tion to  him  as  follows:  "God  bless  you,  my  dear  Keats! 
do  not  despair;  collect  incident,  study  character,  read 
Shakspere,  and  trust  in  Providence,  and  you  will  do,  you 
must ;"  or  the  following  precious  expansion  of  an  image 
in  one  of  the  poet's  sonnets  on  the  Elgin  marbles :  "  I  know 
not  a  finer  image  than  the  comparison  of  a  poet  unable  to 
express  his  high  feelings  to  a  sick  eagle  looking  at  the  sky, 
where  he  must  have  remembered  his  former  towerings 


42  KEATS.  [chap. 

amid  the  blaze  of  dazzling  sunbeams,  in  the  pure  expanse 
of  glittering  clouds ;  now  and  then  passing  angels,  on  heav- 
enly errands,  lying  at  the  will  of  the  wind  with  moveless 
wings,  or  pitching  downward  with  a  fiery  rush,  eager  and 
intent  on  objects  of  their  seeking — " 

But  it  was  the  gifts  and  faculties  which  Hay  don  pos- 
sessed, and  not  those  he  lacked,  it  was  the  ardour  and  en- 
thusiasm of  his  temperament,  and  not  his  essential  com- 
monness of  mind  and  faculty,  that  impressed  his  associates 
as  they  impressed  himself.  The  most  distinguished  spirits 
of  the  time  were  among  his  friends.  Some  of  them,  like 
Wordsworth,  held  by  him  always,  while  his  imperious  and 
importunate  egotism  wore  out  others  after  a  while.  He 
was  justly  proud  of  his  industry  and  strength  of  purpose ; 
proud  also  of  his  religious  faith  and  piety,  and  in  the  habit 
of  thanking  his  Maker  effusively  in  set  terms  for  special 
acts  of  favour  and  protection,  for  this  or  that  happy  in- 
spiration in  a  picture,  for  deliverance  from  "  pecuniary 
emergencies,"  and  the  like.  "  I  always  rose  up  from  my 
knees,"  he  says  strikingly  in  a  letter  to  Keats,  "  with  a  re- 
freshed fury,  an  iron-clenched  firmness,  a  crystal  piety  of 
feeling  that  sent  me  streaming  on  with  a  repulsive  power 
against  the  troubles  of  life."  And  he  was  prone  to  hold 
himself  up  as  a  model  to  his  friends  in  both  particulars, 
lecturing  them  on  faith  and  conduct  while  he  was  living, 
it  might  be,  on  their  bounty.  Experience  of  these  quali- 
ties partly  alienated  Keats  from  him  in  the  long  run.  But 
at  first  sight  Haydon  had  much  to  attract  the  spirits  of 
ardent  youth  about  him  as  a  leader,  and  he  and  Keats 
were  mutually  delighted  when  they  met.  Each  struck  fire 
from  the  other,  and  they  quickly  became  close  friends  and 
comrades.  After  an  evening  of  high  talk  at  the  beginning 
of  their  acquaintance,  on  the  19th  of  November,  1816,  the 


il]  HAYDON.  43 

young  poet  wrote  to  Hay  don  as  follows,  joining  his  name 
with  those  of  Wordsworth  and  Leigh  Hunt : 

"  Last  evening  wrought  me  up,  and  I  cannot  forbear  sending  you 
the  following: 

Great  spirits  now  on  earth  are  sojourning : 
He  of  the  cloud,  the  cataract,  the  lake, 
Who  on  Helvellyn's  summit,  wide  awake, 

Catches  his  freshness  from  Archangel's  wing : 

He  of  the  rose,  the  violet,  the  spring, 

The  social  smile,  the  chain  for  Freedom's  sake, 
And  lo !  whose  steadfastness  would  never  take 

A  meaner  sound  than  Raphael's  whispering. 

And  other  spirits  there  are  standing  apart 
Upon  the  forehead  of  the  age  to  come ; 

These,  these  will  give  the  world  another  heart, 
And  other  pulses.     Hear  ye  not  the  hum 

Of  mighty  workings  in  the  humau  mart  ? 
Listen  awhile,  ye  nations,  and  be  dumb." 

Haydon  was  not  unused  to  compliments  of  this  kind. 
The  three  well-known  sonnets  of  Wordsworth  had  been 
addressed  to  him  a  year  or  two  before;  and  about  the 
same  time  as  Keats,  John  Hamilton  Reynolds  also  wrote 
him  a  sonnet  of  enthusiastic  sympathy  and  admiration. 
In  his  reply  to  Keats  he  proposed  to  hand  on  the  above 
piece  to  Wordsworth — a  proposal  which  "  puts  me,"  an- 
swers Keats,  "  out  of  breath — you  know  with  what  rever- 
ence I  would  send  my  well-wishes  to  him."  Haydon  sug- 
gested, moreover,  what  I  cannot  but  think  the  needless  and 
regrettable  mutilation  of  the  sonnet  by  leaving  out  the 
words  after  "workings"  in  the  last  line  but  one.  The 
poet,  however,  accepted  the  suggestion,  and  his  editors 
have  respected  his  decision.  Two  other  sonnets,  which 
Keats  wrote  at  this  time,  after  visiting  the  Elgin  marbles 
with   his   new  friend,  are   indifferent   poetically,  but   do 


44  KEATS.  [chap. 

credit  to  his  sincerity  in  that  he  refuses  to  go  into  stock 
raptures  on  the  subject,  confessing  his  inability  rightly  to 
grasp  or  analyse  the  impressions  he  had  received.  By  the 
spring  of  the  following  year  his  intimacy  with  Haydon 
was  at  its  height,  and  we  find  the  painter  giving  his  young 
friend  a  standing  invitation  to  his  studio  in  Great  Marl- 
borough Street,  declaring  him  dearer  than  a  brother,  and 
praying  that  their  hearts  may  be  buried  together. 

To  complete  the  group  of  Keats's  friends  in  these  days, 
we  have  to  think  of  two  or  three  others  known  to  him 
otherwise  than  through  Hunt,  and  not  belonging  to  the 
Hunt  circle.  Among  these  were  the  family  and  friends 
of  a  Miss  Georgiana  Wylie,  to  whom  George  Keats  was 
attached.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  navy  officer,  with 
wit,  sentiment,  and  an  attractive  irregular  cast  of  beauty, 
and  Keats  on  his  own  account  had  a  great  liking  for  her. 
On  Valentine's  day,  1818,  we  find  him  writing,  for  George 
to  send  her,  the  first  draft  of  the  lines  beginning,  "  Hadst 
thou  lived  in  days  of  old,"  afterwards  amplified  and  pub- 
lished in  his  first  volume.1  Through  the  Wylies  Keats  be- 
came acquainted  with  a  certain  William  Haslam,  who  was 
afterwards  one  of  his  own  and  his  brothers'  best  friends, 
but  whose  character  and  person  remain  indistinct  to  us; 
and  through  Haslam  with  Joseph  Severn,  then  a  very  young 
and  struggling  student  of  art.  Severn  was  the  son  of  an 
engraver,  and  to  the  despair  of  his  father  had  determined 
to  be  himself  a  painter.  He  had  a  talent  also  for  music, 
a  strong  love  of  literature,  and  doubtless  something  al- 
ready of  that  social  charm  which  Mr.  Ruskin  describes  in 
him  when  they  first  met  five -and -twenty  years  later  at 
Rome.2     From  the  moment  of  their  introduction  Severn 

1  See  Appendix,  p.  221. 

2  See  Praeterita,  vol.  ii.,  chap.  2. 


ii.]  JOSEPH  SEVERN— CHARLES  WELLS.  45 

found  in  Keats  his  very  ideal  of  the  poetical  character 
realized,  and  attached  himself  to  him  with  an  admiring 
affection. 

A  still  younger  member  of  the  Keats  circle  was  Charles 
Wells,  afterwards  author  of  Stories  after  Nature,  and  of 
that  singular  and  strongly  imagined  Biblical  drama  or 
"  dramatic  poem  "  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  which  hav- 
ing fallen  dead  in  its  own  day  has  been  resuscitated  by  a 
group  of  poets  and  critics  in  ours.  "Wells  had  been  a 
school  companion  of  Tom  Keats  at  Enfield,  and  was  now 
living  with  his  family  in  Featherstone  buildings.  He  has 
been  described  by  those  who  knew  him  as  a  sturdy,  bois- 
terous, blue-eyed  and  red-headed  lad,  distinguished  in  those 
days  chiefly  by  an  irrepressible  spirit  of  fun  and  mischief. 
He  was  only  about  fifteen  when  he  sent  to  John  Keats  the 
present  of  roses  acknowledged  in  the  sonnet  beginning, 
"  As  late  I  rambled  in  the  happy  fields."  A  year  or  two 
later  Keats  quarrelled  with  him  for  a  practical  joke  played 
on  Tom  Keats  without  due  consideration  for  his  state  of 
health;  and  the  Stories  after  Nature,  published  in  1822, 
are  said  to  have  been  written  in  order  to  show  Keats  "  that 
he  too  could  do  something." 

Thus  by  his  third  winter  in  London  our  obscurely  born 
and  half-schooled  young  medical  student  found  himself 
fairly  launched  in  a  world  of  art,  letters,  and  liberal  aspira- 
tions, and  living  in  familiar  intimacy  .with  some,  and  friend- 
ly acquaintance  with  others,  of  the  brightest  and  most 
ardent  spirits  of  the  time.  His  youth,  origin,  and  temper- 
ament alike  saved  him  from  anything  but  a  healthy  rela- 
tion of  equality  with  his  younger,  and  deference  towards 
his  elder,  companions.  But  the  power  and  the  charm  of 
genius  were  already  visibly  upon  him.  Portraits  both 
verbal  and  other  exist  in  abundance,  enabling  us  to  realize 


46  KEATS.  [chap. 

Lis  presence  and  the  impression  which  he  made.  "The 
character  and  expression  of  his  features,"  it  is  said,  "  would 
arrest  even  the  casual  passenger  in  the  street."  A  small, 
handsome,  ardent -looking  youth  —  the  stature  little  over 
five  feet ;  the  figure  compact  and  well  -  turned,  with  the 
neck  thrust  eagerly  forward,  carrying  a  strong  and  shapely 
head  set  off  by  thickly  clustering  gold-brown  hair ;  the 
features  powerful,  finished,  and  mobile ;  the  mouth  rich 
and  wide,  with  an  expression  at  once  combative  and  sensi-. 
tive  in  the  extreme ;  the  forehead  not  high,  but  broad  and 
strong;  the  eyebrows  nobly  arched,  and  eyes  hazel-brown, 
liquid-flashing,  visibly  inspired — "  an  eye  that  had  an  in- 
ward look,  perfectly  divine,  like  a  Delphian  priestess  who 
saw  visions."  "Keats  was  the  only  man  I  ever  met  who 
seemed  and  looked  conscious  of  a  high  calling,  except 
Wordsworth."  These  words  are  Haydon's,  and  to  the 
same  effect  Leigh  Hunt :  "  The  eyes  mellow  and  glowing, 
large,  dark,  and  sensitive.  At  the  recital  of  a  noble  action 
or  a  beautiful  thought  they  would  suffuse  with  tears,  and 
his  mouth  trembled."  It  is  noticeable  that  his  friends, 
whenever  they  begin  to  describe  his  looks,  go  off  in  this 
way  to  tell  of  the  feelings  and  the  soul  that  shone  through 
them.  To  return  to  Haydon :  "  He  was  in  his  glory  in 
the  fields.  The  humming  of  a  bee,  the  sight  of  a  flower, 
the  glitter  of  the  sun,  seemed  to  make  his  nature  tremble ; 
then  his  eyes  flashed  his  cheek  glowed,  and  his  mouth 
quivered."  In  like  manner  George  Keats:  "John's  eyes 
moistened  and  his  lip  quivered  at  the  relation  of  any  tale 
of  generosity  or  benevolence  or  noble  daring,  or  at  sights 
of  loveliness  or  distress ;"  and  a  shrewd  and  honoured  sur- 
vivor of  those  days, "  herself  of  many  poets  the  frequent 
theme  and  valued  friend" — need  I  name  Mrs. Procter? — 
has  recorded  the  impression  the  same  eyes  have  left  upon 


ii.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  47 

her,  as  those  of  one  who  had  been  looking  on  some  glori- 
ous sight.1 

In  regard  to  his  social  qualities,  Keats  is  said,  and  owns 
himself,  to  have  been  not  always  perfectly  well-conditioned 
or  at  his  ease  in  the  company  of  women,  but  in  that  of 
men  all  accounts  agree  that  he  was  pleasantness  itself : 
quiet  and  abstracted,  or  brilliant  and  voluble,  by  turns, 
according  to  his  mood  and  company,  but  thoroughly  ami- 
ble  and  unaffected.  If  the  conversation  did  not  interest 
him  he  was  apt  to  draw  apart,  and  sit  by  himself  in  the 
window,  peering  into  vacancy,  so  that  the  window -seat 
came  to  be  recognized  as  his  place.  His  voice  was  rich 
and  low,  and  when  he  joined  in  discussion  it  was  usually 
with  an  eager  but  gentle  animation,  while  his  occasional 
bursts  of  fiery  indignation  at  wrong  or  meanness  bore  no 
undue  air  of  assumption,  and  failed  not  to  command  re- 
spect. His  powers  of  mimicry  and  dramatic  recital  are 
said  to  have  been  great,  and  never  used  unkindly. 

Thus  stamped  by  nature,  and  moving  in  such  a  circle  as 
we  have  described,  Keats  found  among  those  with  whom 
he  lived  nothing  to  check,  but  rather  everything  to  foster, 
his  hourly  growing,  still  diffident  and  trembling,  passion 
for  the  poetic  life.  His  guardian,  as  we  have  said,  of 
course  was  adverse ;  but  his  brothers,  including  George, 
the  practical  and  sensible  one  of  the  family,  were  warmly 
with  him,  as  his  allusions  and  addresses  to  them  both  in 
prose  and  verse,  and  their  own  many  transcripts  from  his 
compositions,  show.  In  August,  1816,  we  find  him  ad- 
dressing from  Margate  a  sonnet  and  a  poetical  Epistle  in 
terms  of  the  utmost  affection  and  confidence  to  George. 
About  the  same  time   he  gave  up  his  lodgings   in    St. 

1  See  Appendix,  p.  221. 
3* 


48  KEATS.  [chap. 

Thomas's  Street  to  go  and  live  with  his  brothers  in  the 
Poultry ;  and  in  November  he  composes  another  sonnet 
on  their  fraternal  fire-side  occupations.  Poetry  and  the 
love  of  poetry  were  at  this  period  in  the  air.  It  was  a 
time  when  even  people  of  business  and  people  of  fashion 
read :  a  time  of  literary  excitement,  expectancy,  and  discus- 
sion, such  as  England  has  not  known  since.  In  such  an 
atmosphere  Keats  soon  found  himself  induced  to  try  his 
fortune  and  his  powers  with  the  rest.  The  encouragement 
of  his  friends  was  indeed  only  too  ready  and  enthusiastic. 
It  was  Leigh  Hunt  who  first  brought  him  before  the  world 
in  print,  publishing  without  comment,  in  the  Examiner  for 
the  5th  of  May,  1816,  his  sonnet  beginning,  "0  Solitude! 
if  I  with  thee  must  dwell,"  and  on  the  1st  of  Decem- 
ber in  the  same  year  the  sonnet  on  Chapman's  Homer. 
This  Hunt  accompanied  by  some  prefatory  remarks  on  the 
poetical  promise  of  its  author,  associating  with  his  name 
those  of  Shelley  and  Reynolds.  It  was  by  the  praise  of 
Hunt  in  this  paper,  says  Mr.  Stephens,  that  Keats's  fate 
was  sealed.  But  already  the  still  more  ardent  encourage- 
ment of  Hay  don,  if  more  was  wanted,  had  come  to  add, 
fuel  to  the  fire.  In  the  Marlborough  Street  studio,  in  the 
Hampstead  cottage,  in  the  City  lodgings  of  the  three  broth- 
ers,' and  in  the  convivial  gatherings  of  their  friends,  it  was 
determined  that  John  Keats  should  put  forth  a  volume  of 
his  poems.  A  sympathetic  firm  of  publishers  was  found 
in  the  Olliers.  The  volume  was  printed,  and  the  last  proof- 
sheets  were  brought  one  evening  to  the  author  amid  a  jovial 
company,  with  the  intimation  that  if  a  dedication  was  to 
be  added  the  copy  must  be  furnished  at  once.  Keats,  go- 
ing to  one  side,  quickly  produced  the  sonnet  To  Leigh 
Hunt,  Esq.,  with  its  excellent  opening  and  its  weak  con- 
clusion : 


ii.]  DETERMINATION  TO  PUBLISH.  49 


"  Glory  and  Loveliness  have  pass'd  away ; 

For  if  we  wander  out  in  early  morn, 

No  wreathed  incense  do  we  see  upborne 
Into  the  East  to  meet  the  smiling  day: 
No  crowd  of  nymphs  soft-voiced  and  young  and  gay, 

In  woven  baskets  bringing  ears  of  corn, 

Roses  and  pinks,  and  violets,  to  adorn 
The  shrine  of  Flora  in  her  early  May. 
But  there  are  left  delights  as  high  as  these, 

And  I  shall  ever  bless  my  destiny, 
That  in  a  time  when  under  pleasant  trees 

Pan  is  no  longer  sought,  I  feel  a  free, 
A  leafy  luxury,  seeing  I  could  please, 

With  these  poor  offerings,  a  man  like  thee." 

With  this  confession  of  a  longing  retrospect  towards  the 
beauty  of  the  old  pagan  world,  and  of  gratitude  for  present 
friendship,  the  young  poet's  first  venture  was  sent  forth  in 
the  month  of  March,  1817. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Poems  of  1817. 

The  note  of  Keats's  early  volume  is  accurately  struck  in 
the  motto  from  Spenser  which  he  prefixed  to  it : 

"  What  more  felicity  can  fall  to  creature 
Than  to  enjoy  delight  with  liberty?" 

The  element  in  which  his  poetry  moves  is  liberty,  the  con- 
sciousness of  release  from  those  conventions  and  restraints, 
not  inherent  in  its  true  nature,  by  which  the  art  had  for 
the  last  hundred  years  been  hampered.  And  the  spirit 
which  animates  him  is  essentially  the  spirit  of  delight — 
delight  in  the  beauty  of  nature  and  the  vividness  of  sensa- 
tion, delight  in  the  charm  of  fable  and  romance,  in  the 
thoughts  of  friendship  and  affection,  in  anticipations  of  the 
future,  and  in  the  exercise  of  the  art  itself  which  expresses 
and  communicates  all  these  joys. 

We  have  already  glanced,  in  connection  with  the  occa- 
sions which  gave  rise  to  them,  at  a  few  of  the  miscellane- 
ous boyish  pieces,  in  various  metres,  which  are  included 
in  the  volume,  as  well  as  at  some  of  the  sonnets.  The  re- 
maining, and  much  the  chief  portion  of  the  book  consists 
of  half  a  dozen  poems  in  the  rhymed  decasyllabic  couplet. 
These  had  all  been  written  during  the  period  between  No- 
vember, 1815,  and  April,  1817,  under  the  combined  influ- 


chap,  in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  1817.  51 

ence  of  the  older  English  poets  and  of  Leigh  Hunt.  The 
former  influence  shows  itself  everywhere  in  the  substance 
and  spirit  of  the. poems,  but  less,  for  the  present,  in  their 
form  and  style.  Keats  had  by  this  time  thrown  off  the 
eighteenth-century  stiffness  which  clung  to  his  earliest  ef- 
forts, but  he  had  not  yet  adopted,  as  he  was  about  to  do, 
a  vocabulary  and  diction  of  his  own,  full  of  licences  caught 
from  the  Elizabethans  and  from  Milton.  The  chief  verbal 
echoes  of  Spenser  to  be  found  in  his  first  volume  are  a  line 
quoted  from  him  entire  in  the  epistle  to  G.  F.  Mathew,  and 
the  use  of  the  archaic  "  teen "  in  the  stanzas  professedly 
Spenserian.  We  can,  indeed,  trace  Keats's  familiarity  with 
Chapman,  and  especially  with  one  poem  of  Chapman's,  his 
translation  of  the  Homeric  Hymn  to  Pan,  in  a  predilec- 
tion for  a  particular  form  of  abstract  descriptive  substan- 
tive: 

"  The  pillowy  silkiness  that  rests 

Full  in  the  speculation  of  the  stars  :" 
"  Or  the  quaint  mossiness  of  aged  roots  :" 
"  Ere  I  can  have  explored  its  widenesses."  l 

The  only  other  distinguishing  marks  of  Keats's  diction  in 
this  first  volume  consist,  I  think,  in  the  use  of  the  Milton- 
ic  "  sphery,"  and  of  an  unmeaning  coinage  of  his  own, 

1  Compare  Chapman,  Hymn  to  Pan : 

"  The  bright-hair'd  god  of  pastoral, 
"Who  yet  is  lean  and  loveless,  and  doth  owe, 
By  lot,  all  loftiest  mountains  crown'd  with  snow, 
All  tops  of  hills,  and  cliffy  highnesses, 
All  sylvan  copses,  and  the  fortresses 
Of  thorniest  queaches  here  and  there  doth  rove, 
And  sometimes,  by  allurement  of  his  love, 
Will  wade  the  wafry  softr, 


52  KEATS.  [chap. 

"  boundly,"  with  a  habit — for  which  Milton,  Spenser,  and, 
among  the  moderns,  Leigh  Hunt,  all  alike  furnished  him 
the  example — of  turning  nouns  into  verbs,  and  verbs  into 
nouns  at  his  convenience.  For  the  rest,  Keats  writes  in 
the  ordinary  English  of  his  day,  with  much  more  feeling 
for  beauty  of  language  than  for  correctness,  and  as  yet 
without  any  formed  or  assured  poetic  style.  Single  lines 
and  passages  declare,  indeed,  abundantly  his  vital  poetic 
faculty  and  instinct.  But  they  are  mixed  up  with  much 
that  only  illustrates  his  crudity  of  taste,  and  the  tendency 
he  at  this  time  shared  with  Leigh  Hunt  to  mistake  the  air 
of  chatty,  trivial  gusto  for  an  air  of  poetic  ease  and  grace. 
In  the  matter  of  metre,  we  can  see  Keats  in  these  poems 
making  a  succession  of  experiments  for  varying  the  regu- 
larity of  the  heroic  couplet.  In  the  colloquial  Epistles, 
addressed  severally  to  G.  F.  Mathew,  to  his  brother  George, 
and  to  Cowden  Clarke,  he  contents  himself  with  the  use  of 
frequent  dissyllabic  rhymes,  and  an  occasional  enjambement 
or  "  overflow."  In  the  Specimen  of  an  Induction  to  a 
Poem,  and.  in  the  fragment  of  the  poem  itself,  entitled 
Calidore  (a  name  borrowed  from  the  hero  of  Spenser's 
sixth  book),  as  well  as  in  the  unnamed  piece  beginning  "  I 
stood  tiptoe  upon  a  little  hill,"  which  opens  the  volume,  he 
further  modifies  the  measure  by  shortening  now  and  then 
the  second  line  of  the  couplet,  with  a  lyric  beat  that  may 
have  been  caught  either  from  Spenser's  nuptial  odes  or 
Milton's  Lycidas — 

"  Open  afresh  your  round  of  starry  folds, 
Ye  ardent  marigolds." 

In  Sleep  and  Poetry,  which  is  the  most  personal  and  inter- 
esting, as  well  as  probably  the  last-written,  poem  in  the 
volume,  Keats  drops  this  practice,  but  in  other  respects  va- 


in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  1817.  53 

ries  the  rhythm  far  more  boldly,  making  free  use  of  the 
overflow,  placing  his  full  pauses  at  any  point  in  a  line 
rather  than  at  the  end,  and  adopting  as  a  principle  rather 
than  an  exception  the  Chaucerian  and  Elizabethan  fashion 
of  breaking  the  couplet  by  closing  a  sentence  or  paragraph 
with  its  first  line. 

Passing  from  the  form  of  the  poems  to  their  substance, 
we  find  that  they  are  experiments  or  poetic  preludes  mere- 
ly, with  no  pretension  to  be  organic  or  complete  works  of 
art.  To  rehearse  ramblingly  the  pleasures  and  aspirations 
of  the  poetic  life,  letting  one  train  of  images  follow  anoth- 
er with  no  particular  plan  or  sequence,  is  all  that  Keats  as 
yet  attempts,  except  in  the  Calidore  fragment,  and  that  is 
on  the  whole  feeble  and  confused.  From  the  outset  the 
poet  loses  himself  in  a  maze  of  young,  luxuriant  imagery ; 
once  and  again,  however,  he  gets  clear,  and  we  have  some 
good  lines  in  an  approach  to  the  Dry  den  manner : 

"  Softly  the  breezes  from  the  forest  came, 
Softly  they  blew  aside  the  taper's  flame ; 
Clear  was  the  song  from  Philomel's  far  bower ; 
Grateful  the  incense  from  the  lime-tree  flower; 
Mysterious,  wild,  the  far-heard  trumpet's  tone ; 
Lovely  the  moon  in  ether,  all  alone." 

To  set  against  this  are  occasionally  expressions  in  the  com- 
plete taste  of  Leigh  Hunt,  as  for  instance, 

"The  lamps  that  from  the  high-roof'd  wall  were  pendent, 
And  gave  the  steel  a  shining  quite  transcendent." 

The  Epistles  are  full  of  cordial  tributes  to  the  conjoint 
pleasures  of  literature  and  friendship.  In  that  to  Cowden 
Clarke,  Keats  acknowledges  to  his  friend  that  he  had  been 
shy  at  first  of  addressing  verses  to  him : 

m 


54  KEATS.  [chap. 

"Nor  should  I  now,  but  that  I've  known  you  long; 
That  }-ou  first  taught  me  all  the  sweets  of  song: 
The  grand,  the  sweet,  the  terse,  the  free,  the  fine,8 
What  swell'd  with  pathos,  and  what  right  divine : 
Spenserian  vowels  that  elope  with  ease, 
And  float  along  like  birds  o'er  summer  seas ; 
Miltonian  storms,  and  more,  Miltonian  tenderness ; 
Michael  in  arms,  and  more,  meek  Eve's  fair  slenderness. 
"Who  read  for  me  the  sonnet  swelling  loudly 
Up  to  its  climax,  and  then  dying  proudly? 
Who  found  for  me  the  grandeur  of  the  ode, 
Growing,  like  Atlas,  stronger  for  its  load  ? 
Who  let  me  taste  that  more  than  cordial  dram, 
The  sharp,  the  rapier-pointed  epigram  ? 
Show'd  me  that  Epic  was  of  all  the  king, 
Kound,  vast,  and  spanning  all  like  Saturn's  ring  ?" 

This  is  characteristic  enough  of  the  quieter  and  lighter 
manner  of  Keats  in  his  early  work.  Blots  like  the  un- 
grammatical  fourth  line  are  not  infrequent  with  him.  The 
preference  for  Miltonian  tenderness  over  Miltonian  storms 
may  remind  the  reader  of  a  later  poet's  more  masterly  ex- 
pression of  the  same  sentiment :  "  Me  rather  all  that  bow- 
ery loneliness."  The  two  lines  on  Spenser  are  of  inter- 
est as  conveying  one  of  those  incidental  criticisms  on  poetry 
by  a  poet  of  which  no  one  has  left  us  more  or  better  than 
Keats.  The  habit  of  Spenser  to  which  he  here  alludes  is 
that  of  coupling  or  repeating  the  same  vowels,  both  in  their 
open  and  their  closed  sounds,  in  the  same  or  successive 
lines,  for  example, 

"  Eftsoones  her  shallow  ship  away  did  slide, 
More  swift  than  swallow  sheres  the  liquid  skye ; 
Withouten  oare  or  pilot  it  to  guide, 
Or  winged  canvas  with  the  wind  to  fly." 

The  run  here  is  on  a  and  e,  principally  on  i,  which  occurs 


in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  1817.  55 

five  times  in  its  open  and  ten  times  in  its  closed  sound  in 
the  four  lines — if  we  are  indeed  to  reckon  as  one  vowel 
these  two  unlike  sounds  denoted  by  the  same  sign.  Keats 
was  a  close  and  conscious  student  of  the  musical  effects  of 
verse,  and  the  practice  of  Spenser  is  said  to  have  suggested 
to  him  a  special  theory  as  to  the  use  and  value  of  the  itera- 
tion of  vowel  sounds  in  poetry.  What  his  theory  was  we 
are  not  clearly  told,  neither  do  I  think  it  can  easily  be  dis- 
covered from  his  practice,  though  every  one  must  feel  a 
great  beauty  of  his  verse  to  be  in  the  richness  of  the  vowel 
and  diphthong  sequences.  He  often  spoke  of  the  subject, 
and  once  maintained  his  view  against  Wordsworth,  when 
the  latter  seemed  to  be  advocating  a  mechanical  principle 
of  vowel  variation. 

Hear  next  how  the  joys  of  brotherly  affection,  of  poetry, 
and  of  nature  come  naively  jostling  one  another  in  the 
Epistle  addressed  from  the  sea-side  to  his  brother  George : 

"As  to  my  sonnets,  though  none  else  should  heed, them, 
I  feel  delighted,  still,  that  you  should  read  them. 
Of  late,  too,  I  have  had  much  calm  enjoyment, 
Stretch'd  on  the  grass  at  my  best  loved  employment 
Of  scribbling  lines  for  you.     These  things  I  thought 
While  in  my  face  the  freshest  breeze  I  caught. 
E'en  now  I  am  pillow'd  on  a  bed  of  flowers 
That  crowns  a  lofty  cliff,  which  proudly  towers 
Above  the  ocean  waves.     The  stalks  and  blades 
Chequer  my  tablet  with  their  quivering  shades. 
On  one  side  is  a  field  of  drooping  oats, 
Through  which  the  poppies  show  their  scarlet  coats ; 
So  pert  and  useless  that  they  bring  to  mind 
The  scarlet  coats  that  pester  human  kind. 
And  on  the  other  side,  outspread  is  seen 
Ocean's  blue  mantle,  streak'd  with  purple  and  green. 
Now  'tis  I  see  a  canrass'd  ship,  and  now 
Mark  the  bright  silver  curling  round  her  brow ; 
E 


56  KEATS.  [chap. 

I  see  the  lark  down-dropping  to  his  nest, 
And  the  broad-wing'd  sea-gull  never  at  rest; 
For  when  no  more  he  spreads  his  feathers  free, 
His  breast  is  dancing  on  the  restless  sea." 

It  is  interesting'  to  watch  the  newly  awakened  literary 
faculty  in  Keats  thus  exercising  itself  in  the  narrow  circle 
of  personal  sensation,  and  on  the  description  of  the  objects 
immediately  before  his  eyes.  The  effect  of  rhythmical 
movement  attempted  in  the  last  lines,  to  correspond  with 
the  buoyancy  and  variety  of  the  motions  described,  has  a 
certain  felicity,  and  the  whole  passage  is  touched  already 
with  Keats's  exquisite  perception  and  enjoyment  of  exter- 
nal nature.  His  character  as  a  poet  of  nature  begins,  in- 
deed, distinctly  to  declare  itself  in  this  first  volume.  lie 
differs  by  it  alike  from  Wordsworth  and  from  Shelley. 
The  instinct  of  Wordsworth  was  to  interpret  all  the  opera- 
tions of  nature  by  those  of  his  own  strenuous  soul ;  and 
the  imaginative  impressions  he  had  received  in  youth  from 
the  scenefy  of  his  home,  deepened  and  enriched  by  contin- 
ual after-meditation,  and  mingling  with  all  the  currents  of 
his  adult  thought  and  feeling,  constituted  for  him  through- 
out his  life  the  most  vital  part  alike  of  patriotism,  of  phi- 
losophy, and  of  religion.  For  Shelley,  on  his  part,  natural 
beauty  was  in  a  twofold  sense  symbolical.  In  the  visible 
glories  of  the  world  his  philosophy  saw  the  veil  of  the  un- 
seen, while  his  philanthropy  found  in  them  types  and  au- 
guries of  a  better  life  on  earth,  and  all  that  imagery  of 
nature's  more  remote  and  skyey  phenomena,  of  which  no 
other  poet  has  had  an  equal  mastery,  and  which  comes 
borne  to  us  along  the  music  of  the  verse — 

"  With  many  a  mingled  close 
Of  wildiEolian  sound  and  mountain  odour  keen  " — 


in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  1817.  57 

was  inseparable  in  bis  soul  from  visions  of  a  radiant  fut- 
ure and  a  renovated — alas!  not  a  buman — humanity.  In 
Keats  tbe  sentiment  of  nature  was  simpler  than  in  either 
of  these  two  other  masters ;  more  direct,  and,  so  to  speak, 
more  disinterested.  It  was  his  instinct  to  love  and  inter- 
pret nature  more  for  her  own  sake,  and  less  for  the  sake  of 
sympathy  which  the  human  mind  can  read  into  her  with 
its  own  workings  and  aspirations.  He  had  grown  up  nei- 
ther like  Wordsworth,  under  the  spell  of  lake  and  mount- 
ain, nor  in  the  glow  of  millennial  dreams,  like  Shelley,  but 
London  -  born  and  Middlesex  -  bred,  was  gifted,  we  know 
not  whence,  as  if  by  some  mysterious  birthright,  with  a  de- 
lighted insight  into  all  the  beauties,  and  sympathy  with 
all  the  life,  of  the  woods  and  fields.  Evidences  of  the 
gift  appear,  as  every  reader  knowrs,  in  the  longer  poems 
of  his  first  volume,  with  their  lingering  trains  of  peace- 
ful summer  imagery,  and  loving  inventories  of  "Nature's 
gentle  doings;"  and  pleasant  touches  of  the  same  kind 
are  scattered  also  among  the  sonnets,  as  in  that  To  Charles 
Wells— 

"  As  late  I  rambled  in  the  happy  fields, 
What  time  the  skylark  shakes  the  tremulous  dew 
From  his  lush  clover  covert ;" 

or  again  in  that  To  Solitude — 

"  Let  me  thy  vigils  keep 
'Mongst  boughs  pavilion'd,  where  the  deer's  swift  leap 
Startles  the  wild  bee  from  the  foxglove  bell."  : 

1  Compare  Wordsworth : 

"  Bees  that  soar  for  bloom, 
High  as  the  highest  peak  of  Furness  Fells, 
Will  murmur  by  the  hour  in  foxglove  bells." 

Is  the  line  of  Keats  an  echo  or  merely  a  coincidence  ? 


£8  KEATS.  [chap. 

Such  intuitive  familiarity  with  the  blithe  activities,  un- 
noted by  common  eyes,  which  make  up  the  life  and  magic 
of  nature,  is  a  gift  we  attribute  to  men  of  primitive  race 
and  forest  nurture;  and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  would  have 
us  recognize  it  as  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  Celtic 
element  in  the  English  genius  and  English  poetry.  It 
was  allied  in  Keats  to  another  instinct  of  the  early  world 
which  we  associate  especially  with  the  Greeks,  the  instinct 
for  personifying  the  powers  of  nature  in  clearly  defined 
imaginary  shapes  endowed  with  human  beauty  and  half- 
human  faculties.  The  classical  teaching  of  the  Enfield 
school  had  not  gone  beyond  Latin,  and  neither  in  boyhood 
nor  afterwards  did  Keats  acquire  any  Greek ;  but  towards 
the  creations  of  the  Greek  mythology  he  was  attracted  by 
an  overmastering  delight  in  their  beauty,  and  a  natural 
sympathy  with  the  phase  of  imagination  that  engendered 
them.  Especially  he  shows  himself  possessed  and  fancy- 
bound  by  the  mythology,  as  well  as  by  the  physical  en- 
chantment, of  the  moon.  Never  was  bard  in  youth  so 
literally  moonstruck.  He  had  planned  a  poem  on  the  an- 
cient story  of  the  loves  of  Diana,  with  whom  the  Greek 
moon-goddess  Selene  is  identified  in  the  Latin  mythology, 
and  the  shepherd-prince  Endymion  ;  and  had  begun  a  sort 
of  prelude  to  it  in  the  piece  that  opens,  "  I  stood  tiptoe 
upon  a  little  hill."  Afterwards,  without  abandoning  the 
subject,  Keats  laid  aside  this  particular  exordium,  and 
printed  it,  as  we  have  seen,  as  an  independent  piece  at  the 
head  of  his  first  volume.  It  is  at  the  climax  of  a  passage 
rehearsing  the  delights  of  evening  that  he  first  bethinks 
himself  of  the  moon — 

"Lifting  her  silver  rim 
Above  a  cloud,  and  with  a  gradual  swim 
Coming  into  the  blue  with  all  her  light." 


in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  181V.  59 

The  thought  of  the  mythic  passion  of  the  moon-goddess 
for  Endymion,  and  the  praises  of  the  poet  who  first  sang 
it,  follow  at  considerable  length.  The  passage  conjuring 
up  the  wonders  and  beneficences  of  their  bridal  night  is 
written  in  part  with  such  a  sympathetic  touch  for  the  col- 
lective feelings  and  predicaments  of  men,  in  the  ordinary 
conditions  of  human  pain  and  pleasure,  health  and  sick- 
ness, as  rarely  occurs  again  in  Keats's  poetry,  though  his 
correspondence  shows  it  to  have  been  most  natural  to  his 
mind — 

"  The  evening  weather  was  so  bright,  and  clear, 
That  men  of  health  were  of  unusual  cheer. 


The  breezes  were  ethereal,  and  pure, 

And  crept  through  half-closed  lattices  to  cure 

The  languid  sick  ;  it  cool'd  their  fever'd  sleep, 

And  sooth'd  them  into  slumbers  full  and  deep. 

Soon  they  awoke  clear-ey'd :  nor  burnt  with  thirsting, 

Nor  with  hot  fingers,  nor  with  temples  bursting : 

And  springing  up,  they  met  the  wond'ring  sight 

Of  their  dear  friends,  nigh  foolish  with  delight ; 

Who  feel  their  arms  and  breasts,  and  kiss  and  stare, 

And  on  their  placid  foreheads  part  the  hair."  1 

Finally  Keats  abandons  and  breaks  off  this  tentative  exor- 
dium of  his  unwritten  poem  with  the  cry — 

"  Cynthia !  I  cannot  tell  the  greater  blisses 
That  followed  thine  and  thy  dear  shepherd's  kisses  : 
Was  there  a  poet  born  ?     But  now  no  more 
My  wandering  spirit  must  no  farther  soar." 

1  Mr.  W.  T.  Arnold  in  his  Introduction  (p.  xxvii.)  quotes  a  parallel 
passage  from  Leigh  Hunt's  Gentle  Armour  as  an  example  of  the  de- 
gree to  which  Keats  was  at  this  time  indebted  to  Hunt :  forgetting 
that  the  Gentle  Armour  was  not  written  till  1831,  and  that  the  debt 
in  this  instance  is  therefore  the  other  way. 


60  KEATS.  [cnAP. 

Was  there  a  poet  born  ?  Is  the  labour  and  the  reward 
of  poetry  really  and  truly  destined  to  be  his?  The  ques- 
tion is  one  which  recurs  in  this*  early  volume  importu- 
nately and  in  many  tones :  sometimes  with  words  and 
cadences  closely  recalling  those  of  Milton  in  his  boyish 
Vacation  Exercise;  sometimes  with  a  cry  like  this,  which 
occurs  twice  over  in  the  piece  called  Sleep  and  Poetry : 

"  0  Poesy  !  for  thee  I  hold  my  pen, 
That  am  not  yet  a  glorious  denizen 
Of  thy  wide  heaven ;" 

and  anon,  with  a  less  wavering,  more  confident  and  daring- 
tone  of  young  ambition — 

"  But  off,  Despondence  !  miserable  bane  ! 
They  should  not  know  thee,  who,  athirst  to  gain 
A  noble  end,  are  thirsty  every  hour. 
What  though  I  am  not  wealthy  in  the  dower 
Of  spanning  wisdom ;  though  I  do  not  know 
The  shiftings  of  the  mighty  winds  that  blow 
Hither  and  thither  all  the  changing  thoughts 
Of  man ;  though  no  great  ministering  reason  sorts 
Out  the  dark  mysteries  of  human  souls 
To  clear  conceiving  ;  yet  there  ever  rolls 
A  vast  idea  before  me." 

The  feeling  expressed  in  these  last  lines,  the  sense  of  the 
overmastering  pressure  and  amplitude  of  an  inspiration  as 
yet  unrealized  and  indistinct,  gives  way  in  other  passages 
to  confident  anticipations  of  fame,  and  of  the  place  which 
he  will  hold  in  the  affections  of  posterity. 

There  is  obviously  a  great  immaturity  and  uncertainty 
in  all  these  outpourings,  an  intensity  and  effervescence  of 
emotion  out  of  proportion,  as  yet,  both  to  the  intellectual 
and  the  voluntary  powers,  much  confusion  of  idea,  and  not 
a  little  of  expression.     Yet  even  in  this  first  book  of  Keats 


in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  1817.  61 

there  is  much  that  the  lover  of  poetry  will  always  cherish. 
Literature,  indeed,  hardly  affords  another  example  of  work 
at  once  so  crude  and  so  attractive.  Passages  that  go  to 
pieces  under  criticism  nevertheless  have  about  them  a  spirit 
of  beauty  and  of  morning,  an  abounding  young  vitality 
and  freshness,  that  exhilarate  and  charm  us,  whether  with 
the  sanction  of  our  judgment  or  without  it.  And  alike  at 
its  best  and  worst,  the  work  proceeds  manifestly  from  a 
spontaneous  and  intense  poetic  impulse.  The  matter  of 
these  early  poems  of  Keats  is  as  fresh  and  unconventional 
as  their  form,  springing  directly  from  the  native  poignancy 
of  his  sensations  and  abundance  of  his  fancy.  That  his 
inexperience  should  always  make  the  most  discreet  use  of 
its  freedom  could  not  be  expected ;  but  with  all  its  imma- 
turity his  work  has  strokes  already  which  suggest  compar- 
ison with  the  great  names  of  literature.  AVho  much  ex- 
ceeds him,  even  from  the  first,  but  Shakspeare  in  momentary 
felicity  of  touch  for  nature?  and  in  that  charm  of  morning 
freshness  who  but  Chaucer?  Already,  too,  we  find  him 
showing  signs  of  that  capacity  for  clear  and  sane  self- 
knowledge  which  becomes  by-and-by  so  admirable  in  him. 
And  he  has  already  begun  to  meditate  to  good  purpose  on 
the  aims  and  methods  of  his  art.  He  has  grasped,  and 
vehemently  asserts,  the  principle  that  poetry  should  not 
strive  to  enforce  particular  doctrines,  that  it  should  not 
contend  in  the  field  of  reason,  but  that  its  proper  organ 
is  the  imagination,  and  its  aim  the  creation  of  beauty. 
With  reference  to  the  theory  and  practice  of  the  poetic 
art  the  piece  called  Sleep  and  Poetry  contains  one  passage 
which  has  become  classically  familiar  to  all  readers.  Often 
as  it  has  been  quoted  elsewhere,  it  must  be  quoted  again 
here,  as  indispensable  to  the  understanding  of  the  literary 
atmosphere  in  which  Keats  lived : 


62  KEATS.  [chap. 

"  Is  there  so  small  a  range 
In  the  present  strength  of  manhood  that  the  high 
Imagination  cannot  freely  fly 
As  she  was  wont  of  old  ?  prepare  her  steeds, 
Paw  up  against  the  light,  and  do  strange  deeds 
Upon  the  clouds  ?     Has  she  not  shown  us  all  ? 
From  the  clear  space  of  ether,  to  the  small 
Breath  of  new  buds  unfolding?     From  the  meaning 
Of  Jove's  large  eyebrow,  to  the  tender  greening 
Of  April  meadows  ?  here  her  altar  shone, 
E'en  in  this  isle ;  and  who  could  paragon 
The  fervid  choir  that  lifted  up  a  noise 
Of  harmony,  to  where  it  aye  will  poise 
Its  mighty  self  of  convoluting  sound, 
Huge  as  a  planet,  and  like  that  roll  round, 
Eternally  around  a  dizzy  void  ? 
Ay,  in  those  days  the  Muses  were  nigh  cloy'd 
With  honours ;  nor  had  any  other  care 
Than  to  sing  out  and  soothe  their  wavy  hair. 

Could  all  this  be  forgotten  ?     Yes,  a  schism 
Nurtured  by  foppery  and  barbarism 
Made  great  Apollo  blush  for  this  his  land. 
Men  were  thought  wise  who  could  not  understand 
His  glories  ;  with  a  puling  infant's  force 
They  sway'd  about  upon  a  rocking-horse, 
And  thought  it  Pegasus.     Ah,  dismal-soul'd  ! 
The  winds  of  heaven  blew,  the  ocean  roll'd 
Its  gathering  waves — ye  felt  it  not.     The  blue 
Bared  its  eternal  bosom,  and  the  dew 
Of  summer  night  collected  still  to  make 
The  morning  precious :  Beauty  was  awake ! 
Why  were  ye  not  awake  •?    But  ye  were  dead 
To  things  ye  knew  not  of — were  closely  wed 
To  musty  laws  lined  out  with  wretched  rule 
And  compass  vile ;  so  that  ye  taught  a  school 
Of  dolts  to  smooth,  inlay,  and  clip,  and  fit, 
Till,  like  the  certain  wands  of  Jacob's  wit, 
Their  verses  tallied.     Easy  was  the  task : 
A  thousand  handicraftsmen  wore  the  mask 


m.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  1817.  63 

Of  Poesy.     Ill-fated,  impious  race  ! 
'■  That  blasphemed  the  bright  Lyrist  to  his  face, 
And  did  not  know  it — no,  they  went  about, 
Holding  a  poor,  decrepit  standard  out, 
Mark'd  with  most  flimsy  mottoes,  and  in  large 
The  name  of  one  Boileau  ! 

0  ye  whose  charge 
It  is  to  hover  round  our  pleasant  hills ! 
Whose  congregated  majesty  so  fills 
My  boundly  reverence  that  I  cannot  trace 
Your  hallow'd  names  in  this  unholy  place, 
So  near  those  common  folk ;  did  not  their  shames 
Affright  you  ?     Did  our  old  lamenting  Thames 
Delight  you?  did  ye  never  cluster  round 
Delicious  Avon  with  a  mournful  sound, 
And  weep  ?     Or  did  ye  wholly  bid  adieu 
To  regions  where  no  more  the  laurel  grew  ? 
Or  did  ye  stay  to  give  a  welcoming 
To  some  lone  spirits  who  could  proudly  sing 
Their  youth  away,  and  die  ?     'Twas  even  so. 
But  let  me  think  away  those  times  of  woe  : 
Now  'tis  a  fairer  season ;  ye  have  breathed 
Rich  benedictions  o'er  us ;  ye  have  wreathed 
Fresh  garlands  :  for  sweet  music  has  been  heard 
In  many  places  ;  some  has  been  upstirr'd 
From  out  its  crystal  dwelling  in  a  lake 
By  a  swan's  ebon  bill ;  from  a  thick  brake, 
Nested  and  quiet  in  a  valley  mild, 
Bubbles  a  pipe ;  fine  sounds  are  floating  wild 
About  the  earth :  happy  are  ye,  and  glad." 


Both  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  this  are  typical- 
ly characteristic  of  the  time  and  of  the  man.  The  passage 
is  likely  to  remain  for  posterity  the  central  expression  of 
the  spirit  of  literary  emancipation  then  militant  and  about 
to  triumph  in  England.  The  two  great  elder  captains  of 
revolution,  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  have  both  cxpound- 
4 


64  KEATS.  [chap. 

ed  their  cause,  in  prose,  with  much  more  maturity  of 
thought  and  language ;  Coleridge  in  the  luminous  retro- 
spect of  the  Biographia  Literaria,  Wordsworth  in  the  au- 
stere contentions  of  his  famous  prefaces.  But  neither  has 
left  any  enunciation  of  theory  having  power  to  thrill  the 
ear  and  haunt  the  memory  like  the  rhymes  of  this  young 
untrained  recruit  in  the  cause  of  poetic  liberty  and  the  re- 
turn to  nature.  It  is  easy,  indeed,  to  pick  these  verses  of 
Keats  to  shreds,  if  we  choose  to  fix  a  prosaic  and  rational 
.attention  on  their  faults.  What  is  it,  for  instance,  that 
imagination  is  asked  to  do?  fly,  or  drive?  Is  it  she,  or 
her  steeds,  that  are  to  paw  up  against  the  light?  and  why 
paw  ?  Deeds  to  be  done  upon  clouds  by  pawing  can  hard- 
ly be  other  than  strange.  What  sort  of  a  verb  is  "  I  green, 
thou  greenest?"  Delight  with  liberty  is  very  well,  but 
liberty  in  a  poet  ought  not  to  include  liberties  with  the 
parts  of  speech.  Why  should  the  hair  of  the  muses  re- 
quire "soothing?" — if  it  were  their  tempers  it  would  be 
more  intelligible.  And  surely  "  foppery  "  belongs  to  civ- 
ilization and  not  to  "  barbarism ;"  and  a  standard-bearer 
may  be  decrepit,  but  not  a  standard,  and  a  standard  flimsy, 
but  not  a  motto.  "  Boundly  reverence:"  what  is  bound- 
ly  ?  And  so  on  without  end,  if  we  choose  to  let  the  mind 
assume  that  attitude.  Many  minds  not  indifferent  to  lit- 
erature were  at  that  time,  and  some  will  at  all  times  be, 
incapable  of  any  other.  Such  must  naturally  turn  to  the 
work  of  the  eighteenth-century  school,  the  school  of  tact 
and  urbane  brilliancy  and  sedulous  execution,  and  think 
the  only  "  blasphemy  "  was  on  the  side  of  the  youth  who 
could  call,  or  seem  to  call,  the  poet  of  Belinda  and  the 
Epistle  to  Dr.  Arbuthnot  fool  and  dolt.  Byron,  in  his 
controversy  with  Bowles  a  year  or  two  later,  adopted  this 
mode  of  attack  effectively  enough,  his   spleen  against  a 


in.]  THE  "POEMS"  OF  181?.  65 

contemporary  finding,  as  usual,  its  most  convenient  weapon 
in  an  enthusiasm,  partly  real  and  partly  affected,  for  the 
genius  and  the  methods  of  Pope.  But  controversy  apart,  if 
we  have  in  us  a  touch  of  instinct  for  the  poetry  of  imagi- 
nation and  beauty,  as  distinct  from  that  of  taste  and  reason, 
however  clearly  we  may  see  the  weak  points  of  a  passage 
like  this,  however  much  we  may  wish  that  taste  and  rea- 
son had  had  more  to  do  with  it,  yet  we  cannot  but  feel 
that  Keats  touches  truly  the  root  of  the  matter ;  we  can- 
not but  admire  the  elastic  life  and  variety  of  his  verse,  his 
fine  spontaneous  and  effective  turns  of  rhetoric,  the  ring 
and  power  of  his  appeal  to  the  elements,  and  the  glow  of 
his  delight  in  the  achievements  and  promise  of  the  new 
age. 

His  volume,  on  its  appearance,  by  no  means  made  the 
impression  which  his  friends  had  hoped  for  it.  Hunt  pub- 
lished a  thoroughly  judicious,  as  well  as  cordial,  criticism 
in  the  Examiner,  and  several  of  the  provincial  papers  no- 
ticed the  book.'  Haydon  wrote  in  his  ranting  vein:  "I 
have  read  your  Sleep  and  Poetry — it  is  a  flash  of  lightning 
that  will  rouse  men  from  their  occupations,  and  keep  them 
trembling  for  the  crash  of  thunder  that  will  follow."  But 
people  were  in  fact  as  far  from  being  disturbed  in  their 
occupations  as  possible.  The  attention  of  the  reading 
public  was  for  the  moment  almost  entirely  absorbed  by 
men  of  talent  or  of  genius  who  played  with  a  more  care- 
less, and  some  of  them  with  a  more  masterly,  touch  than 
Keats  as  yet,  on  commoner  chords  of  the  human  spirit, 
as  Moore,  Scott,  and  Byron.  In  Keats's  volume  every  one 
could  see  the  faults,  while  the  beauties  appealed  only  to 
the  poetically  minded.  It  seems  to  have  had  a  moderate 
sale  at  first,  but  after  the  first  few  weeks  none  at  all.  The 
poet,  or  at  all  events  his  brothers  for  him,  were  inclined, 


66  KEATS.  [chap.  hi. 

apparently  with  little  reason,  to  blame  their  friends  the 
publishers  for  the  failure.  On  the  29th  of  April  we  find 
the  brothers  Oilier  replying  to  a  letter  of  George  Keats  in 
dudgeon:  "We  regret  that  your  brother  ever  requested 
us  to  publish  his  book,  or  that  our  opinion  of  its  talent 
should  have  led  us  to  acquiesce  in  undertaking  it.  We 
are,  however,  much  obliged  to  you  for  relieving  us  from 
the  unpleasant  necessity  of  declining  any  further  connex- 
ion with  it,  which  we  must  have  done,  as  we  think  the 
curiosity  is  satisfied,  and  the  sale  has  dropped."  One  of 
their  customers,  they  go  on  to  say,  had,  a  few  days  ago, 
hurt  their  feelings  as  men  of  business  and  of  taste  by  call- 
ing it  "  no  better  than  a  take  in." 

A  fortnight  before  the  date  of  this  letter  Keats  had  left 
London.  Haydon  had  been  urging  on  him,  not  injudi- 
ciously, the  importance  of  seclusion  and  concentration  of 
mind.  We  find  him  writing  to  Reynolds  soon  after  the 
publication  of  his  volume :  "  My  brothers  are  anxious  that 
I  should  go  by  myself  into  the  country;  they  have  al- 
ways been  extremely  fond  of  me,  and  now  that  Haydon 
has  pointed  out  how  necessary  it  is  that  I  should  be  alone 
to  improve  myself,  they  give  up  the  temporary  pleasure 
of  living  with  me  continually  for  a  great  good  which  I 
hope  will  follow  :  so  I  shall  soon  be  out  of  town."  And 
on  the  14th  of  April  he  in  fact  started  for  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  intending  to  devote  himself  entirely  to  study,  and 
to  make  immediately  a  fresh  start  upon  Endymion. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Excursion  to  Isle  of  Wight,  Margate,  and  Canterbury. — Summer  at 
Hampstead. —  New  friends:  Dilke,  Brown,  Bailey. —  With  Bailey 
at  Oxford.— Return :  Old  Friends  at  Odds.— Burford  Bridge.— Win- 
ter at  Hampstead. — Wordsworth,  Lamb,  Hazlitt. — Poetical  Activ- 
ity.— Spring  at  Teignmouth. — Studies  and  Anxieties. — Marriage 
and  Emigration  of  George  Keats.     [April,  1817 — May,  1818.] 

As  soon  as  Keats  reached  the  Isle  of  Wight,  on  April 
10,  1817,  he  went  to  see  Shanklin  and  Carisbrooke,  and 
after  some  hesitation  between  the  two,  decided  on  a  lodg- 
ing at  the  latter  place.  The  next  day  he  writes  to  Reyn- 
olds that  he  has  spent  the  morning  arranging  the  books 
and  prints  he  had  brought  with  him,  adding  to  the  latter 
one  of  Shakspeare  which  he  had  found  in  the  passage,  and 
which  had  particularly  pleased  him.  He  speaks  with  en- 
thusiasm of  the  beauties  of  Shanklin,  but  in  a  postscript 
written  the  following  day  mentions  that  he  has  been  nerv 
ous  from  want  of  sleep,  and  much  haunted  by  the  passage 
in  Lear,  "Do  you  not  hear  the  sea?" — adding  without 
farther  preface  his  own  famous  sea-sonnet  beginning, 

"It  keeps  eternal  whisperings  around 

Desolate  shores,  and  with  its  mighty  swell 
Gluts  twice  ten  thousand  caverns." 

In  the  same  postscript  Keats  continues  : 

"I  find  I  cannot  do  without  poetry — without  eternal  poetry;  half 
the  day  will  not  do— the  whole  of  it.     I  began  with  a  little,  but  habit 


68  KEATS.  [chap. 

has  made  me  a  leviathan.  I  had  become  all  in  a  tremble  from 
not  having  written  anything  of  late:  the  Sonnet  overleaf  did  me 
good ;  I  slept  the  better  last  night  for  it ;  this  morning,  however,  I 
am  nearly  as  bad  again.  ...  I  shall  forthwith  begin  my  Endymion, 
which  I  hope  I  shall  have  got  some  way  with  before  you  come,  when 
we  will  read  our  verses  in  a  delightful  place  I  have  set  my  heart  upon, 
near  the  Castle." 


The  Isle  of  Wight,  however,  Keats  presently  found,  did 
not  suit  him,  and  Haydon's  prescription  of  solitude  proved 
too  trying.  He  fell  into  a  hind  of  fever  of  thought  and 
sleeplessness  which  lie  thought  it  wisest  to  try  and  shake 
off  by  flight.  Early  in  May  we  find  him  writing  to  Leigh 
Hunt  from  Margate,  where  he  had  already  stayed  the  year 
before,  and  explaining  the  reasons  of  his  change  of  abode. 
Later  in  the  same  letter,  endeavouring  to  measure  his  own 
powers  against  the  magnitude  of  the  task  to  which  he  has 
committed  himself,  he  falls  into  a  vein  like  that  which  we 
have  seen  recurring  once  and  again  in  his  verses  during 
the  preceding  year,  the  vein  of  awed  self-questioning,  and 
tragic  presentiment  uttered  half  in  earnest  and  half  in  jest. 
The  next  day  we  find  him  writing  a  long  and  intimate, 
very  characteristic  letter  to  Ilaydon,  signed  "  Your  everlast- 
ing friend,"  and  showing  the  first  signs  of  the  growing  in- 
fluence which  Ilaydon  was  beginning  to  exercise  over  him 
in  antagonism  to  the  influence  of  Leigh  Hunt.  Keats  was 
quite  shrewd  enough  to  feel  for  himself,  after  a  little  while, 
the  touches  of  vanity,  fuss,  and  affectation,  the  lack  of 
depth  and  strength,  in  the  kind  and  charming  nature  of 
Hunt,  and  quite  loyal  enough  to  value  his  excellences  none 
the  less,  and  hold  him  in  grateful  and  undiminished  friend- 
ship. But  Haydon,  between  whom  and  Hunt  there  was 
by  degrees  arising  a  coolness,  must  needs  have  Keats  see 
things  as  he  saw  them.    "  I  love  you  like  my  own  brother," 


iv.]  MARGATE.  69 

insists  he :  "  beware,  for  God's  sake,  of  the  delusions  and 
sophistications  that  are  ripping  up  the  talents  and  morality 
of  our  friend !  He  will  go  out  of  the  world  the  victim  of 
his  own  weakness  and  the  dupe  of  his  own  self-delusions, 
with  the  contempt  of  his  enemies  and  the  sorrow  of  his 
friends,  and  the  cause  he  undertook  to  support  injured  by 
his  own  neglect  of  character."  There  is  a  lugubrious  irony 
in  these  words,  when  we  remember  how  Haydon,  a  self- 
deluder  indeed,  came  to  realize  at  last  the  very  fate  he 
here  prophesies  for  another — just  when  Hunt,  the  harass- 
ing and  often  sordid,  ever  brightly  borne,  troubles  of  his 
earlier  life  left  behind  him,  was  passing,  surrounded  by  af- 
fection, into  the  haven  of  a  peaceful  and  bland  old  age. 
But  for  a  time,  under  the  pressure  of  Haydon's  masterful 
exhortations,  we  find  Keats  inclining  to  take  an  exagger- 
ated and  slightly  impatient  view  of  the  foibles  of  his  ear- 
lier friend. 

Amono-  other  interesting  confessions  to  be  found  in 
Keats's  letter  to  Haydon  from  Margate  is  that  of  the  fan- 
cy— almost  the  sense — which  often  haunted  him  of  de- 
pendence on  the  tutelary  genius  of  Shakspeare : 

"  I  remember  your  saying  that  you  had  notions  of  a  good  genius 
presiding  over  you.  I  have  lately  had  the  same  thought,  for  tilings 
which  I  do  half  at  random  are  afterwards  confirmed  by  my  judg- 
ment in  a  dozen  features  of  propriety.  Is  it  too  daring  to  fancy 
Shakspeare  this  presider  ?  When  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  I  met  with 
a  Shakspeare  in  the  passage  of  the  house  at  which  I  lodged.  It 
comes  nearer  to  my  idea  of  him  than  any  I  have  seen ;  I  was  but 
there  a  week,  yet  the  old  woman  made  me  take  it  with  me,  though  I 
went  off  in  a  hurry.     Do  you  not  think  this  ominous  of  good  ?" 

Next  he  lays  his  finger  on  the  great  secret  flaw  in  his  own 
nature,  describing  it  in  words  which  the  after  issue  of  his 
life  will  keep  but  too  vividly  and  constantly  before  our 


VO  KEATS.  [chap. 

minds:  "Truth  is,  I  have  a  horrid  Morbidity  of  Tempera- 
ment, which  has  shown  itself  at  intervals  ;  it  is,  I  have  no 
doubt,  the  greatest  Enemy  and  stumbling-block  I  have  to 
fear ;  I  may  even  say,  it  is  likely  to  be  the  cause  of  my 
disappointment."  Was  it  that,  in  this  seven-montlis'  child 
of  a  consumptive  mother,  some  unhealth  of  mind  as  well 
as  body  was  congenital  ? — or  was  it  that,  along  with  what 
seems  his  Celtic  intensity  of  feeling  and  imagination,  he 
had  inherited  a  special  share  of  that  inward  gloom  which 
the  reverses  of  their  history  have  stamped,  according  to 
some,  on  the  mind  of  the  Celtic  race?  We  cannot  tell, 
but  certain  it  is  that  along  with  the  spirit  of  delight,  ever 
creating  and  multiplying  images  of  beauty  and  joy,  there 
dwelt  in  Keats's  bosom  an  almost  equally  busy  and  invent- 
ive spirit  of  self-torment. 

The  fit  of  dejection  which  led  to  the  remark  above 
quoted  had  its  immediate  cause  in  apprehensions  of  money 
difficulties  conveyed  to  Keats  in  a  letter  from  his  brother 
George.  The  trust  funds  of  which  Mr.  Abbey  had  the 
disposal  for  the  benefit  of  the  orphans,  under  the  deed 
.executed  by  Mrs.  Jennings,  amounted  approximately  to 
£8000/  of  which  the  capital  was  divisible  among  them 
on  their  coming  of  age,  and  the  interest  was  to  be  applied 
to  their  maintenance  in  the  meantime.  But  the  interest 
of  John's  share  had  been  insufficient  for  his  professional 
and  other  expenses  during  his  term  of  medical  study  at 
Edmonton  and  London,  and  much  of  his  capital  had  been 
anticipated  to  meet  them  :  p'resumably  in  the  form  of 
loans  raised  on  the  security  of  his  expectant  share.  Simi- 
lar advances  had  also  been  for  some  time  necessary  to  the 
invalid  Tom  for  his  support,  and  latterly — since  he  left 
the  employment  of  Mr.  Abbey — to  George  as  well.  It  is 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  219. 


iv.]  MARGATE— CANTERBURY— HAMPSTEAD.  VI 

clear  that  the  arrangements  for  obtaining  these  advances 
were  made  both  wasteful ly  and  grudgingly.  It  is  further 
plain  that  the  brothers  were  very  insufficiently  informed 
of  the  state  of  their  affairs.  In  the  meantime  John  Keats 
was  already  beginning  to  discount  his  expectations  from 
literature.  Before  or  about  the  time  of  his  rupture  with 
the  Olliers  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  those  excel- 
lent men,  Messrs.  Taylor  and  Hessey,  who  were  shortly,  as 
publishers  of  the  London  Magazine,  to  gather  about  them 
on  terms  of  cordial  friendship  a  group  of  contributors  com- 
prising more  than  half  the  choicest  spirits  of  the  day.  With 
them,  especially  with  Mr.  Taylor,  who  was  himself  a  student 
and  writer  of  independent,  somewhat  eccentric  ability  and 
research,  Keats's  relations  were  excellent  from  first  to  last, 
generous  on  their  part,  and  affectionate  and  confidential  on 
his.  He  had  made  arrangements  with  them,  apparently 
before  leaving  London,  for  the  eventual  publication  of  En- 
dymion,  and  from  Margate  we  find  him  acknowledging  a 
first  payment  received  in  advance.  Now  and  again  after- 
wards he  turns  to  the  same  friends  for  help  at  a  pinch, 
adding  once,  "  I  am  sure  you  are  confident  of  my  responsi- 
bility, and  of  the  sense  of  squareness  that  is  always  in  me;" 
nor  did  they  at  any  time  belie  his  expectation. 

From  Margate,  where  he  had  already  made  good  prog- 
ress with  Endymion,  Keats  went  with  his  brother  Tom  to 
spend  some  time  at  Canterbury.  Thence  they  moved,  early 
in  the  summer,  to  lodgings  kept  by  a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bentley 
in  Well  Walk,  Hampstead,  where  the  three  brothers  had 
decided  to  take  up  their  abode  together.  Here  he  con- 
tinued through  the  summer  to  work  steadily  at  Endymion, 
being  now  well  advanced  with  the  second  book ;  and  some 
of  his  friends,  as  Haydon,  Cowden  Clarke,  and  Severn,  re- 
membered all  their  lives  afterwards  the  occasions  when 
4*         F 


72  KEATS.  [chap. 

they  walked  with  him  on  the  heath,  while  he  repeated  to 
them,  in  his  rich  and  tremulous,  half-chanting  tone,  the 
newly  written  passages  which  best  pleased  him.  From  his 
poetical  absorption  and  Elysian  dreams  they  were  accus- 
tomed to  see  him  at  a  touch  come  back  to  daily  life ;  some- 
times to  sympathize  heart  and  soul  with  their  affairs,  some- 
times in  a  burst  of  laughter,  nonsense,  and  puns  (it  was  a 
punning  age,  and  the  Keatses  were  a  very  punning  family), 
sometimes  with  a  sudden  flash  of  his  old  schoolboy  pug- 
nacity and  fierceness  of  righteous  indignation.  To  this 
summer  or  the  following  winter,  it  is  not  quite  certain 
which,  belongs  the  well-known  story  of  his  thrashing  in 
stand-up  fight  a  stalwart  young  butcher  whom  he  had 
found  tormenting  a  cat  (a  "  ruffian  in  livery,"  according  to 
one  account,  but  the  butcher  version  is  the  best  attested). 

For  the  rest,  the  choice  of  Hampstead  as  a  place  of  resi- 
dence had  much  to  recommend  it  to  Keats :  the  freshness 
of  the  air  for  the  benefit  of  the  invalid  Tom ;  for  his  own 
walks  and  meditations  those  beauties  of  heath,  field,  and 
wood,  interspersed  with  picturesque  embosomed  habita- 
tions, which  his  imagination  could  transmute  at  will  into 
the  landscapes  of  Arcadia,  or  into  those,  "  with  high  ro- 
mances blent,"  of  an  earlier  England  or  of  fable-land.  For 
society  there  was  the  convenient  proximity  to,  and  yet  se- 
clusion from,  London,  together  with  the  immediate  neigh- 
bourhood of  one  or  two  intimate  friends.  Among  these, 
Keats  frequented  as  familiarly  as  ever  the  cottage  in  the 
Vale  of  Health  where  Leigh  Hunt  was  still  living — a  kind 
of  self-appointed  poet-laureate  of  Hampstead,  the  features 
of  which  he  was  for  ever  celebrating,  now  in  sonnets  and 
now  in  the  cheerful  singsong  of  his  familiar  Epistles : 

"  And  yet  how  can  I  touch,  and  not  linger  awhile 
On  the  spot  that  has  haunted  my  youth  like  a  smile  ? 


iv.]  NEW  FRIENDS:   DILKE  AND  BROWN.  73 

On  its  fine  breathing  prospects,  its  clump-wooded  glades, 
Dark  pines,  and  white  houses,  and  long-alley'd  shades, 
With  fields  going  down,  where  the  bard  lies  and  sees 
The  hills  up  above  him  with  roofs  in  the  trees." 

Several  effusions  of  this  kind,  with  three  sonnets  addressed 
to  Keats  himself,  some  translations  from  the  Greek,  and  a 
not  ungraceful  mythological  poem,  the  Nymphs,  were  pub- 
lished early  in  the  following  year  by  Leigh  Hunt  in  a  vol- 
ume called  Foliage,  which  helped  to  draw  down  on  him 
and  his  friends  the  lash  of  Tory  criticism. 

Near  the  foot  of  the  heath,  in  the   opposite  direction 
from  Hunt's  cottage,  lived  two  new  friends  of  Keats  who 
had  been  introduced  to  him  by  Reynolds,  and  with  whom 
he  was  soon  to  become  extremely  intimate.     These  were 
Charles  Wentworth  Dilke  and  Charles  Armitage  Brown 
(or  plain  Charles  Brown,  as  he  at  this  time  styled  himself). 
Dilke  was  a  young  man  of  twenty-nine,  by  birth  belong- 
ing to  a  younger  branch  of  the  Dilkes  of  Maxstoke  Castle, 
by  profession  a  clerk  in  the  Navy  Pay-office,  and  by  opin- 
ions at  this  time  a  firm  disciple  of  Godwin.     He  soon  gave 
himself  up  altogether  to  literary  and  antiquarian  studies, 
and  lived,  as  every  one  knows,  to  be  one  of  the  most  ac- 
complished and  influential  of  English  critics  and  journal- 
ists, and  for  many  years  editor  and  chief  owner  of  the 
Athenceum.     No  two  men  could  well  be  more  unlike  in 
mind  than  Dilke  and  Keats :  Dilke  positive,  bent  on  cer- 
tainty, and  unable,  as  Keats  says,  "  to  feel  he  has  a  per- 
sonal identity  unless  he  has  made  up  his  mind  about  every- 
thing ;"  while  Keats,  on  his  part,  held  that  "  the  only  means 
of  strengthening  one's  intellect  is  to  make  up  one's  mind 
about  nothing — to  let  the  mind  be  a  thoroughfare  for  all 
thoughts."     Nevertheless,  the  two  took  to  each  other  and 
became  fast  friends.     Dilke  had  married  young,  and  built 


74  KEATS.  LCIIAP- 

himself,  a  year  or  two  before  Keats  knew  him,  a  modest 
semi-detached  house  in  a  good-sized  garden  near  the  lower 
end  of  Hampstead  Heath,  at  the  bottom  of  what  is  now 
John  Street :  the  other  part  of  the  same  block  being  built 
and  inhabited  by  his  friend  Charles  Brown.  This  Brown 
was  the  son  of  a  Scotch  stockbroker  living  in  Lambeth. 
He  was  born  in  1786,  and  while  almost  a  boy  went  out  to 
join  one  of  his  brothers  in  a  merchant's  business  at  St. 
Petersburg ;  but  the  business  failing,  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land in  1808,  and  lived  as  he  could  for  the  next  few  years, 
until  the  death  of  another  brother  put  him  in  possession 
of  a  small  competency.  He  had  a  taste,  and  some  degree 
of  talent,  for  literature,  and  held  strongly  Radical  opinions. 
In  1S10  he  wrote  an  opera  on  a  Russian  subject,  called 
Narensky,  which  was  brought  out  at  the  Lyceum,  with 
Braham  in  the  principal  part ;  and  at  intervals  during  the 
next  twenty  years  many  criticisms,  talcs,  and  translations 
from  the  Italian,  chiefly  printed  in  the  various  periodicals 
edited  by  Leigh  Hunt.  When  Keats  first  knew  him, 
Brown  was  a  young  man  already  of  somewhat  middle- 
aged  appearance,  stout,  bald,  and  spectacled — a  kindly  com- 
panion, and  jovial,  somewhat  free  liver,  with  a  good  meas- 
ure both  of  obstinacy  and  caution  lying  in  reserve,  more 
Scotico,  under  his  pleasant  and  convivial  outside.  It  is 
clear  by  his  relation^  with  Keats  that  his  heart  was  warm, 
and  that  wrhen  once  attached,  he  was  capable  not  only  of 
appreciation  but  of  devotion.  After  the  poet's  death 
Brown  went  to  Italy,  and  became  the  friend  of  Trelawney, 
whom  he  helped  with  the  composition  of  the  Adventures 
of  a  Younger  Son,  and  of  Landor,  at  whose  villa  near 
Florence  Lord  Houghton  first  met  him  in  1832.  Two 
years  later  he  returned  to  England,  and  settled  at  Plym- 
outh, where  he  continued  to  occupy  himself  with  litera- 


iv]  NEW  FRIENDS:   BAILEY.  V5 

tare  and  journalism,  and  particularly  with  his  chief  work, 
an  essay,  ingenious  and  in  part  sound,  on  the  autobio- 
graphical poems  of  Shakspeare.  Thoughts  of  Keats,  and  a 
wish  to  be  his  biographer,  never  left  him,  until  in  1841  he 
resolved  suddenly  to  emigrate  to  New  Zealand,  and  de- 
parted leaving  his  materials  in  Lord  Houghton's  hands. 
A  year 'afterwards  he  died  of  apoplexy^  the  settlement 
of  New  Plymouth,  now  called  Taranaki.1 

Yet  another  friend  of  Reynolds,  who  in  these  months 
attached  himself  with  a  warm  affection  to  Keats,  was  Ben- 
jamin  Bailey,  an   Oxford  undergraduate  reading  for  the 
Church,  afterwards  Archdeacon  of  Colombo.     Bailey  was 
a  great  lover  of  books,  devoted  especially  to  Milton  among 
past  and  to  Wordsworth  among  present  poets.     For  his 
earnestness  and  integrity  of  character  Keats  conceived  a 
strong  respect,  and   a  hearty   liking  for  his  person,  and 
much  of  what  was  best  in  his  own  nature,  and  deepest  in 
his  mind  and  cogitations,  was   called   out  in   the  inter- 
course that  ensued  between  them.     In  the  course  of  this 
summer,  1817,  Keats  had  been  invited  by  Shelley  to  stay 
with  him  at  Great  Marlow,  and  Hunt,  ever  anxious  that 
the  two  young  poets  should  be  friends,  pressed  him  strong- 
ly to  accept  the  invitation.     It  is  said  by  Mcdwin,  but  the 
statement  is  not  confirmed  by  other  evidence,  that  Shelley 
and  Keats  had  set  about  their  respective  "  summer  tasks," 
the  composition  of  Laon  and  Oythna  and  of  Endymion, 
by  mutual  agreement  and  in  a  spirit  of  friendly  rivalry. 

i  The  facts  and  dates  relating  to  Brown  in  the  above  paragraph 
were  furnished  by  his  son,  still  living  in  New  Zealand,  to  Mr.  Leslie 
Stephen  from  whom  I  have  them.  The  point  about  the  Adventures 
of  a  Younger  Son  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  the  mottoes  in  that 
work  are  mostly  taken  from  the  Keats  MSS.,  then  in  Brown's  hands, 
especially  Otho. 


76  KEATS.  [chap. 

Keats,  at  an)'  rate,  declined  his  brother  poet's  invitation,  in 
order,  as  lie  said,  that  he  might  have  his  own  unfettered 
scope.  Later  in  the  same  summer,  while  his  brothers  were 
away  on  a  trip  to  Paris,  he  accepted  an  invitation  of  Bailey 
to  come  to  Oxford,  and  stayed  there  during  the  last  five 
or  six  weeks  of  the  Long  Vacation.  Here  he  wrote  the 
third  book  of  Endymion,  working  steadily  every  morning, 
and  composing  with  great  facility  his  regular  average  of 
fifty  lines  a  day.  The  afternoons  they  would  spend  in 
walking  or  boating  on  the  Isis,  and  Bailey  has  feelingly 
recorded  the  pleasantness  of  their  days,  and  of  their  dis- 
cussions on  life,  literature,  and  the  mysteries  of  things. 
He  tells  of  the  sweetness  of  Keats's  temper  and  charm  of 
his  conversation,  and  of  the  gentleness  and  respect  with 
which  the  hot  young  liberal  and  free-thinker  would  listen 
to  his  host's  exposition  of  his  own  orthodox  convictions; 
describes  his  enthusiasm  in  quoting  Chatterton  and  in 
dwelling  on  passages  of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  particularly 
from  the  Tintern  Abbey  and  the  Ode  on  Immortality  ;  and 
recalls  his  disquisitions  on  the  harmony  of  numbers  and 
other  technicalities  of  his  art,  the  power  of  his  thrilling 
looks  and  low-voiced  recitations,  his  vividness  of  inner  life, 
and  intensity  of  quiet  enjoyment  during  their  field  and 
river  rambles  and  excursions.1  One  special  occasion  of 
pleasure  was  a  pilgrimage  they  made  together  to  Stratford- 
on-Avon.  From  Oxford  are  some  of  the  letters  written 
by  Keats  in  his  happiest  vein :  to  Reynolds,  and  his  sister 
Miss  Jane  Reynolds,  afterwards  Mrs.  Tom  Hood  ;  to  Play- 
don  ;  and  to  his  young  sister  Frances  Mary,  or  Fanny,  as 
she  was  always  called  (now  Mrs.  Llanos).  George  Keats, 
writing  to  this  sister  after  John's  death,  speaks  of  the 
times  "  when  we  lived  with  our  grandmother  at  Edmon- 
1  Houghton  MSS. 


iv.]  WITH  BAILEY  AT  OXFORD.  11 

ton,  and  John,  Tom,  and  myself  were  always  devising  plans 
to  amuse  you,  jealous  lest  you  should  prefer  either  of  us 
to  the  others."  Since  those  times  Keats  had  seen  little 
of  her,  Mr.  Abbey  having  put  her  to  a  boarding-school  be- 
fore her  grandmother's  death,  and  afterwards  taken  her 
into  his  own  house  at  Walthamstow,  where  the  visits  of 
her  poet  brother  were  not  encouraged.  "  He  often,"  writes 
Bailey,  "  spoke  to  me  of  his  sister,  who  was  somehow  with- 
holden  from  him,  with  great  delicacy  and  tenderness  of 
affection  ;"  and  from  this  time  forward  we  find  him  main- 
taining with  her  a  correspondence  which  shows  his  charac- 
ter in  its  most  attractive  light.  He  bids  her  keep  all  his 
letters  and  he  will  keep  hers — "  and  thus  in  the  course  of 
time  we  shall  each  of  us  have  a  good  bundle — which  here- 
after, when  things  may  have  strangely  altered,  and  God 
knows  what  happened,  we  may  read  over  together  and 
look  with  pleasure  on  times  past — that  now  are  to  come." 
He  tells  her  about  Oxford  and  about  his  work,  and  gives 
her  a  sketch  of  the  story  of  Endymion — "  but  I  dare  say 
you  have  read  this  and  all  other  beautiful  tales  which  have 
come  down  to  us  from  the  ancient  times  of  that  beautiful 
Greece." 

Early  in  October  Keats  returned  to  Hampstead,  whence 
he  writes  to  Bailey,  noticing  with  natural  indignation  the 
ruffianly  first  article  of  the  Cockney  School  series,  which 
had  just  appeared  in  Blackwood' 's  Magazine  for  that 
month.  In  this  the  special  object  of  attack  was  Leigh 
Hunt,  but  there  were  allusions  to  Keats  which  seemed  to 
indicate  that  his  own  turn  was  coming.  What  made  him 
more  seriously  uneasy  were  signs  of  discord  springing  up 
among  his  friends,  and  of  attempts  on  the  part  of  some  of 
them  to  set  him  against  others.  Haydon  had  now  given 
up  his  studio  in  Great  Marlborough  Street  for  one  in  Lis- 


78  KEATS.  [chap. 

son  Grove ;  and  Hunt,  having  left  the  Vale  of  Health,  was 
living  close  by  him  at  a  lodging  in  the  same  street.  "  I 
know  nothing  of  anything  in  this  part  of  the  world," 
writes  Keats:  "everybody  seems  at  loggerheads."  And 
he  goes  on  to  say  how  Hunt  and  Haydon  are  on  uncom- 
fortable terms,  and  "  live,  pour  ainsi  dire,  jealous  neigh- 
bours. Haydon  says  to  me,  '  Keats,  don't  show  your 
lines  to  Hunt  on  any  account,  or  he  will  have  done  half 
for  you' — so  it  appears  Hunt  wishes  it  to  be  thought." 
With  more  accounts  of  warnings  he  had  received  from 
common  friends  that  Hunt  was  not  feeling  or  speaking 
cordially  about  Endymion.  "  Now  is  not  all  this  a  most 
paltry  thing  to  think  about?  .  .  .  This  is,  to  be  sure,  but 
the  vexation  of  a  day;  nor  would  I  say  so  much  about  it 
to  any  but  those  whom  I  know  to  have  my  welfare  and 
reputation  at  heart."  !  When,  three  months  later,  Keats 
showed  Hunt  the  first  book  of  his  poem  in  proof,  the  lat- 
ter found  many  faults.  It  is  clear  he  was  to  some  extent 
honestly  disappointed  in  the  work  itself.  He  may  also 
have  been  chagrined  at  not  having  been  taken  more  fully 
into  confidence  during  its  composition  ;  and  what  he  said 
to  others  was  probably  due  partly  to  such  chagrin,  partly 
to  nervousness  on  behalf  of  his  friend's  reputation  :  for  of 
double-facedncss  or  insincerity  in  friendship  wre  know  by 
a  hundred  evidences  that  Hunt  was  incapable.  Keats, 
however,  after  what  he  had  heard,  was  by  no  means  with- 
out excuse  when  he  wrote  to  his  brothers  concerning  Hunt 
— not  unkindly,  or  making  much  of  the  matter — "  the  fact 
is,  he  and  Shelley  are  hurt,  and  perhaps  justly,  at  my  not 
having  showed  them  the  affair  officiously;  and  from  sev- 
eral hints  I  have  had,  they  appear  much  disposed  to  dis- 
sect and  anatomize  any  trip  or  slip  I  may  have  made.  But 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  222. 


IV  -]  OLD  FRIENDS  AT  ODDS.  79 

who's  afraid  ?"  Keats  was  not  the  man  to  let  this  kind  of 
thing  disturb  seriously  his  relations  with  a  friend;  and 
writing  about  the  same  time  to  Bailey,  still  concerning  the 
dissensions  in  the  circle,  he  expounds  the  practical  philoso- 
phy of  friendship  with  truly  admirable  good  sense  and 
feeling : 

"Things  have  happened  lately  of  great  perplexity;  you  must  have  . 
heard  of  "them;  Reynolds  and  Haydon  retorting  and  recriminating, 
and  parting  forever.  The  same  thing  has  happened  between  Haydon 
and  Hunt.  It  is  unfortunate:  men  should  bear  with  each  other; 
there  lives  not  the  man  who  may  not  be  cut  up,  aye,  lashed  to  pieces, 
on  his  weakest  side.  The  best  of  men  have  but  a  portion  of  good  in 
them— a  kind  of  spiritual  yeast  in  their  frames,  which  creates  the  fer- 
ment of  existence— by  which  a  man  is  propelled  to  act  and  strive, 
and  buffet  with  circumstance.  The  sure  way,  Bailey,  is  first  to  know 
a  man's  faults,  and  then  be  passive.  If  after  that  he  insensibly 
draws  you  towards  him,  then  you  have  no  power  to  break  the  link. 
Before  I  felt  interested  in  either  Reynolds  or  Haydon,  I  was  well-read 
in  their  faults  ;  yet,  knowing  them  both,  I  have  been  cementing  grad- 
ually with  both.  I  have  an  affection  for  them  both,  for  reasons  al- 
most opposite ;  and  to  both  must  I  of  necessity  cling,  supported  al- 
ways by  the  hope  that  when  a  little  time,  a  few  years,  shall  have  tried 
me  more  fully  in  their  esteem,  I  may  be  able  to  bring  them  together. 
This  time  must  come,  because  they  have  both  hearts ;  and  they  will 
recollect  the  best  parts  of  each  other  when  this  gust  is  overblown." 

Keats  had,  in  the  meantime,  been  away  on  another  au- 
tumn excursion  into  the  country:  this  time  to  Burford 
Bridge,  near  Dorking.  Here  he  passed  pleasantly  the  lat- 
ter part  of  November,  much  absorbed  in  the  study  of 
Shakspeare's  minor  poems  and  sonnets,  and  in  the  task  of 
finishing  Endymion.  He  had  thus  all  but  succeeded  in 
carrying  out  the  hope  which  he  had  expressed  in  the  open- 
ing passage  of  the  poem  : 

"  Many  and  many  a  verse  I  hope  to  write, 
Before  the  daisies,  vermeil  rimm'd  and  white, 


80  KEATS.  [chap. 

Hide  in  deep  herbage  ;  and  ere  yet  the  bees 
Hum  about  globes  of  clover  and  sweet  peas, 
I  must  be  near  the  middle  of  my  story. 
0  may  no  wintry  season,  bare  and  hoary, 
See  it  half  finished;  but  let  Autumn  bold, 
With  universal  tinge  of  sober  gold, 
Be  all  about  me  when  I  make  an  end." 


Returning  to  Harapstead,  Keats  spent  the  first  part  of  the 
winter  in  comparative  rest  from  literary  work.  Ilis  chief 
occupation  was  in  revising  and  seeing  Endymion  through 
the  press,  with  much  help  from  the  publisher,  Mr.  Taylor, 
varied  by  occasional  essays  in  dramatic  criticism,  and  as 
the  spring  began,  by  the  composition  of  a  number  of  mi- 
nor incidental  poems.  In  December  he  lost  the  compan- 
ionship of  his  brothers,  who  went  to  winter  in  Devonshire 
for  the  sake  of  Tom's  health.  But  in  other  company  he 
was  at  this  time  mixing  freely.  The  convivial  gatherings 
of  the  young  men  of  his  own  circle  were  frequent,  the  fun 
high,  the  discussions  on  art  and  literature  boisterous,  and 
varied  with  a  moderate,  evidently  never  a  very  serious, 
amount  of  card-playing,  drinking,  and  dissipation.  From 
these  gatherings  Keats  was  indispensable,  and  more  than 
welcome  in  the  sedater  literary  circle  of  his  publishers, 
Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hessey,  men  as  strict  in  conduct  and 
opinion  as  they  were  good-hearted.  His  social  relations 
began,  indeed,  in  the  course  of  this  winter  to  extend  them- 
selves more  than  he  much  cared  about,  or  thought  con- 
sistent with  proper  industry.  We  find  him  dining  with 
Horace  Smith  in  company  with  some  fashionable  wits,  con- 
cerning whom  he  reflects  :  "  They  only  served  to  convince 
me  how  superior  humour  is  to  wit  in  respect  to  enjoyment. 
These  men  say  things  which  make  one  start,  without  mak- 
ing one  feel ;  they  are  all  alike ;  their  manners  are  alike ; 


IV.]  WINTER  AT  IIAMPSTEAD.  81 

they  all  know  fashionables ;  they  have  all  a  mannerism  in 
their  very  eating-  and  drinking-,  in  their  mere  handling  a 
dceanter.  They  talked  of  Kean  and  his  low  company. 
'  Would  I  were  with  that  company  instead  of  yours,'  said 
I  to  myself."  Men  of  ardent  and  deep  natures,  whether 
absorbed  in  the  realities  of  experience  or  in  the  ideals  of 
art  and  imagination,  are  apt  to  be  affected  in  this  way  by 
the  conventional  social  sparkle  which  is  only  struck  from 
and  only  illuminates  the  surface.  Hear,  on  the  other  hand, 
with  what  pleasure  and  insight,  what  sympathy  of  genius 
for  genius,  Keats  writes  after  seeing  the  great  tragedian 
last  mentioned  interpret  the  inner  and  true  passions  of  the 
soul : 

"  The  sensual  life  of  verse  springs  warm  from  the  lips  of  Kean 

His  tongue  must  seem  to  have  robbed  the  Hybla  bees  and  left  them 
honeyless  !  There  is  an  indescribable  gusto  in  his  voice,  by  which  we 
feel  that  the  utterer  is  thinking  of  the  past  and  future  while  speak- 
ing of  the  instant.  When  he  says  in  Othello,  'Put  up  your  bright 
swords,  for  the  dew  will  rust  them,'  we  feel  that  his  throat  had  com- 
manded where  swords  were  as  thick  as  reeds.  From  eternal  risk,  he 
speaks  as  though  his  body  were  unassailable.  Again,  his  exclama- 
tion of  '  blood  !  blood  !  blood  !'  is  direful  and  slaughterous  to  the  last 
degree ;  the  very  words  appear  stained  and  gory.  His  nature  hangs 
over  them,  making  a  prophetic  repast.  The  voice  is  loosed  on  them, 
like  the  wild  dogs  on  the  savage  relics  of  an  eastern  conflict;  and  we 
can  distinctly  hear  it  '  gorging  and  growling  o'er  carcase  and  limb.' 
In  Richard, '  Be  stirring  with  the  lark  to-morrow,  gentle  Norfolk !' 
came  from  him  as  through  the  morning  atmosphere  towards  which 
he  yearns." 

It  was  in  the  Christmas  weeks  of  1817-18  that  Keats 
undertook  the  office  of  theatrical  critic  for  the  Champion 
newspaper  in  place  of  Reynolds,  who  was  away  at  Exeter. 
Early  in  January  he  writes  to  his  brothers  of  the  pleasure 
he  has  had  in  seeino-  their  sister,  who  had  been  brought  to 


82  KEAT.S.  [chap. 

London  for  the  Christmas  holidays,  and  tells  them  how  he 
has  called  on  and  been  asked  to  dine  by  Wordsworth,  whom 
he  had  met  on  the  28th  of  December  at  a  supper  given  by 
Haydon.  This  is  the  famous  Sunday  supper,  or  "immor- 
tal dinner,"  as  Haydon  calls  it,  which  is  described  at  length 
in  one  of  the  most  characteristic  passages  of  the  painter's 
Autobiography.  Besides  Wordsworth  and  Keats  and  the 
host,  there  were  present  Charles  Lamb  and  Monkhouse. 
"Wordsworth's  fine  intonation  as  he  quoted  Milton  and 
Virgil,  Keats's  eager  inspired  look,  Lamb's  quaint  sparkle 
of  lambent  humour,  so  speeded  the  stream  of  conversation," 
says  Haydon,"  that  I  never  passed  a  more  delightful  time." 
Later  in  the  evening  came  in  Ritchie,  the  African  traveller, 
just  about  to  start  on  the  journey  to  Fezzan  on  which  he 
died,  besides  a  self-invited  guest  in  the  person  of  one  King- 
ston, Comptroller  of  Stamps,  a  foolish,  good-natured  gen- 
tleman, recommended  only  by  his  admiration  for  Words- 
worth. Presently  Lamb,  getting  fuddled,  lost  patience  with 
the  platitudes  of  Mr.  Kingston,  and  began  making  fun  of 
him,  with  pranks  and  personalities  which  to  Haydon  ap- 
peared hugely  funny,  but  which  Keats,  in  his  letter  to  his 
brothers,  mentions  with  less  relish,  saying,  "  Lamb  got  tip- 
sy and  blew  up  Kingston,  proceeding  so  far  as  to  take  the 
candle  across  the  room,  hold  it  to  his  face,  and  show  us 
what  a  soft  fellow  he  was."1  Keats  saw  Wordsworth  of- 
ten in  the  next  few  weeks  after  their  introduction  at  Hay- 
don's,  but  has  left  us  no  personal  impressions  of  the  elder 
poet,  except  a  passing  one  of  surprise  at  finding  him  one 
day  preparing  to  dine,  in  a  stiff  collar  and  his  smartest 
clothes,  with  his  aforesaid  unlucky  admirer,  Mr.  Comptrol- 
ler Kingston.  W^e  know  from  other  sources  that  he  was 
once  persuaded  to  recite  to  Wordsworth  the  Hymn  to  Pan 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  222. 


it.]  WORDSWORTH— LAMB— HAZLITT.  83 

from  Endymion.  "  A  pretty  piece  of  Paganism,"  remark- 
ed Wordsworth,  according  to  his  usual  encouraging  way 
with  a  brother  poet;  and  Keats  was  thought  to  have 
winced  under  the  frigidity.  Independently  of  their  per- 
sonal relations,  the  letters  of  Keats  show  that  Words- 
worth's poetry  continued  to  be  much  in  his  thoughts 
throughout  these  months,  what  he  has  to  say  of  it  varying 
according  to  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  he  writes.  In 
the  enthusiastic  mood  he  declares,  and  within  a  few  days 
again  insists,  that  there  are  three  things  to  rejoice  at  in 
the  present  age  :  "  The  Excursion,  Haydon's  Pictures,  and 
Hazlitt's  depth  of  Taste."  This  mention  of  the  name  of 
Hazlitt  brings  us  to  another  intellectual  influence  which 
somewhat  powerfully  affected  Keats  at  this  time.  On  the 
liberal  side  in  politics  and  criticism  there  was  no  more  ef- 
fective or  more  uncertain  free  lance  than  that  eloquent  and 
splenetic  writer,  with  his  rich,  singular,  contradictory  gifts, 
his  intellect  equally  acute  and  fervid,  his  temperament  both 
enthusiastic  and  morose,  his  style  at  once  rich  and  incisive. 
The  reader  acquainted  with  Hazlitt's  manner  will  easily 
recognize  its  influence  on  Keats  in  the  fragment  of  stage 
criticism  above  quoted.  Hazlitt  was  at  this  time  delivering 
his  course  of  lectures  on  the  English  poets  at  the  Surrey 
Institution,  and  Keats  was  among  his  regular  attendants. 
With  Hazlitt  personally,  as  with  Lamb,  his  intercourse  at 
Haydon's  and  elsewhere  seems  to  have  been  frequent  and 
friendly,  but  not  intimate;  and  Haydon  complains  that  it 
was  only  after  the  death  of  Keats  that  he  could  get  Haz- 
litt to  acknowledge  his  genius. 

Of  Haydon  himself,  and  of  his  powers  as  a  painter,  we 
see  by  the  words  above  quoted  that  Keats  continued  to 
think  as  highly  as  ever.  He  had,  as  Severn  assures  us,  a 
keen  natural  instinct  for  the  arts  both  of  painting  and  mu- 


84  KEATS.  [chap. 

sic.  Cowdcn  Clarke's  piano-playing  had  been  a  delight  to 
him  at  school,  and  he  tells  us  himself  how  from  a  boy  he 
had  in  his  mind's  eye  visions  of  pictures :  "  When  a  school- 
boy, the  abstract  idea  I  had  of  an  heroic  painting  was  what 
I  cannot  describe.  I  saw  it  somewhat  sideways — large, 
prominent,  round,  and  coloured  with  magnificence — some- 
what like  the  feel  I  have  of  Anthony  and  Cleopatra.  Or 
of  Alcibiades  leaning  on  his  crimson  couch  in  his  galley, 
his  broad  shoulders  imperceptibly  heaving  with  the  sea." 
In  Haydon's  pictures  Keats  continued  to  see,  as  the  friends 
and  companions  of  every  ardent  and  persuasive  worker  in 
the  arts  are  apt  to  see,  not  so  much  the  actual  performance 
as  the  idea  he  had  preconceived  of  it  in  the  light  of  his 
friend's  intentions  and  enthusiasm.  At  this  time  Ilaydon, 
who  had  already  made  several  drawings  of  Keats's  head  in 
order  to  introduce  it  in  his  picture  of  Christ  entering  Je- 
rusalem, proposed  to  make  another  more  finished,  "to  be 
engraved,"  writes  Keats,  "  in  the  first  style,  and  put  at  the 
head  of  my  poem,  saying,  at  the  same  time,  he  had  never 
done  the  thing  for  any  human  being,  and  that  it  must  have 
considerable  effect,  as  he  will  put  his  name  to  it,"  Both 
poet  and  publisher  were  delighted  with  this  condescension 
on  the  part  of  the  sublime  Haydon,  who  failed,  however, 
to  carry  out  his  promise.  "My  neglect,"  said  Haydon, 
long  afterwards,  "  really  gave  him  a  pang,  as  it  now  does 
me." 

With  Hunt,  also,  Keats's  intercourse  continued  frequent, 
while  with  Reynolds  his  intimacy  grew  daily  closer.  Both 
of  these  friendships  had  a  stimulating  influence  on  his 
poetic  powers.  "The  Wednesday  before  last,  Shelley, 
Hunt,  and  I  wrote  each  a  sonnet  on  the  river  Nile,"  he 
tells  his  brothers  on  the  16th  of  February,  1818.  "I  have 
been  writing  at  intervals  many  songs  and  sonnets,  and  I 


iv.]  POETICAL  ACTIVITY.  85 

long  to  be  at  Teignmouth  to  read  them  over  to  you."  With, 
the  help  of  Keats's  manuscripts,  or  of  the  transcripts  made 
from  them  by  his  friends,  it  is  possible  to  retrace  the  actual 
order  of  many  of  these  fugitive  pieces.  On  the  16th  of 
January  was  written  the  humourous  sonnet  on  Mrs.  Reyn- 
olds's cat;  on  the  21st,  after  seeing  in  Leigh  Hunt's  pos- 
session a  lock  of  hair  reputed  to  be  Milton's,  the  address 
to  that  poet  beginning  "  Chief  of  organic  numbers !" 
and  on  the  22d  the  sonnet,  "  0  golden-tongued  Romance 
with  serene  lute,"  in  which  Keats  describes  himself  as  lay- 
ing aside  (apparently)  his  Spenser  in  order  to  read  again 
the  more  rousing  and  human  -  passionate  pages  of  Lear. 
On  the  31st  he  sends  in  a  letter  to  Reynolds  the  lines  to 
Apollo  beginning  "  Hence  Burgundy,  Claret,  and  Port," 
and  in  the  same  letter  the  sonnet  beginning  "  When  I  have 
fears  that  I  may  cease  to  be,"  which  he  calls  his  last.  On 
the  3d  of  February  he  wrote  the  spirited  lines  to  Robin 
Hood,  suggested  by  a  set  of  sonnets  by  Reynolds  on  Sher- 
wood Forest;  on  the  4th  the  sonnet  beginning  "Time's 
sea  has  been  five  years  at  its  slow  ebb,"  in  which  he  re- 
calls the  memory  of  an  old,  otherwise  unrecorded  love- 
fancy,  and  also  the  well-known  sonnet  on  the  Nile,  written 
at  Hunt's  in  competition  with  that  friend  and  with  Shelley  ; 
on  the  5th  another  sonnet  postponing  compliance  for  the 
present  with  an  invitation  of  Leigh  Hunt's  to  compose 
something  in  honour,  or  in  emulation,  of  Spenser ;  and  on 
the  8th  the  sonnet  in  praise  of  the  colour  blue,  composed 
by  way  of  protest  against  one  of  Reynolds.  About  the 
same  time  Keats  agreed  with  Reynolds  that  they  should 
each  write  some  metrical  tales  from  Boccaccio,  and  pub- 
lish them  in  a  joint  volume,  and  began  at  once  for  his 
own  part  with  Isabella  or  the  Pot  of  Basil.  A  little  later 
in  this  so  prolific  month  of  February  we  find  him  rejoic- 


86  KEATS.  '  [chap. 

ing  in  the  song  of  the  thrush  and  blackbird,  and  melted 
into  feelings  of  indolent  pleasure  and  receptivity  under 
the  influence  of  spring  winds  and  dissolving  rain.  He 
theorizes  pleasantly  in  a  letter  to  Reynolds  on  the  virtues 
and  benefits  of  this  state  of  mind,  translating  the  thrush's 
music  into  some  blank-verse  lines  of  a  singular  and  haunt- 
ing melody.  In  the  course  of  the  next  fortnight  we  find 
him  in  correspondence  with  Taylor  about  the  corrections 
to  Endymion,  and  soon  afterwards  making  a  clearance 
of  borrowed  books,  and  otherwise  preparing  to  flit.  His 
brother  George,  who  had  been  taking  care  of  Tom  at 
Teignmouth  since  December,  was  now  obliged  to  come  to 
town,  bent  on  a  scheme  of  marriage  and  emigration ;  and 
Tom's  health  having  made  a  momentary  rally,  Keats  was 
unwilling  that  he  should  leave  Teignmouth,  and  deter- 
mined to  join  him  there.  He  started  in  the  second  week 
of  March,  and  stayed  almost  two  months.  It  was  an  un- 
lucky season  for  weather — the  soft -buffeting  sheets  and 
misty  drifts  of  Devonshire  rain  renewing  themselves,  in 
the  inexhaustible  way  all  lovers  of  that  country  know, 
throughout  almost  the  whole  spring,  and  preventing  him 
from  getting  more  than  occasional  tantalizing  snatches  of 
enjoyment  in  the  beauty  of  the  scenery,  the  walks,  and 
flowers.  His  letters  are  full  of  objurgations  against  the 
climate,  conceived  in  a  spirit  which  seems  hardly  compati- 
ble, in  one  of  his  strong  family  feeling,  with  the  tradition 
which  represents  his  father  to  have  been  a  Devonshire 
man : 

"  You  may  say  what  you  will  of  Devonshire :  the  truth  is,  it  is  a 
splashy,  rain}7,  misty,  snowy,  foggy,  haify,  floody,  muddy,  slipshod 
county.  The  hills  are  very  beautiful,  when  you  get  a  sight  of  'em; 
the  primroses  are  out — but  then  you  are  in ;  the  cliffs  are  of  a  fine 
deep  colour,  but  then  the  clouds  are  continually  vicing  with  them. . . . 


iv.]  LETTER  TO  REYNOLDS.  87 

I  fancy  the  very  air  of  a  deteriorating  quality.  I  fancy  the  flowers, 
all  precocious,  have  an  Acrasian  spell  about  them  ;  I  feel  able  to  beat 
off  the  Devonshire  waves  like  soap-froth.  I  tnink  it  well  for  the 
honour  of  Britain  that  Julius  Caesar  did  not  first  land  in  this  county. 
A  Devonshirer,  standing  on  his  native  hills,  is  not  a  distinct  object ;  he 
does  not  show  against  the  light ;  a  wolf  or  two  would  dispossess  him."  1 

Besides  his  constant  occupation  in  watching  and  cheer- 
ing his  invalid  brother,  who  had  a  relapse  just  after  he 
came  down,  Keats  was  busy  daring  these  Devonshire  days 
seeing  through  the  press  the  last  sheets  of  Endymion.  He 
also  composed,  with  the  exception  of  the  few  verses  he 
had  begun  at  Hampstead,  the  whole  of  Isabella,  the  first 
of  his  longer  poems  written  with  real  maturity  of  art  and 
certainty  of  touch.  At  the  same  time  he  was  reading  and 
appreciating  Milton  as  he  had  never  done  before.  With 
the  minor  poems  he  had  been  familiar  from  a  boy,  but  had 
not  been  attracted  by  Paradise  Lost  until  first  Severn,  and 
then  more  energetically  Bailey,  had  insisted  that  this  was 
a  reproach  to  him  ;  and  he  now  turned  to  that  poem,  and 
penetrated  with  the  grasp  and  swiftness  of  genius,  as  his 
marginal  criticisms  show,  into  the  very  essence  of  its  pow- 
er and  beauty.  His  correspondence  with  his  friends,  par- 
ticularly Bailey  and  Reynolds,  is,  during  this  same  time, 
unusually  sustained  and  full.  It  was  in  all  senses  mani- 
festly a  time  with  Keats  of  rapidly  maturing  power,  and 
in  some  degree  also  of  threatening  gloom.  The  mysteries 
of  existence  and  of  suffering,  and  the  "  deeps  of  good  and 
evil/'  were  beginning  for  the  first  time  to  press  habitually 
on  his  thoughts.  In  that  beautiful  and  interesting  letter 
to  Reynolds,  in  which  he  makes  the  comparison  of  human 
life  to  a  mansion  of  many  apartments,  it  is  his  own  present 
state  which  he  thus  describes : 

'See  Appendix,  p.  222. 
5        G 


88  KEATS.  [chap. 

"  We  no  sooner  get  into  the  second  chamber,  which  I  shall  call  the 
Chamber  of  Maiden-thought,  than  we  become  intoxicated  with  the 
light  and  the  atmosphere.  We  see  nothing  but  pleasant  wonders, 
and  think  of  delaying  there  forever  in  delight.  However,  among  the 
effects  this  breathing  is  father  of,  is  that  tremendous  one  of  sharpen- 
ing one's  vision  into  the  heart  and  nature  of  man,  of  convincing  one's 
nerves  that  the  world  is  full  of  misery  and  heartbreak,  pain,  sick- 
ness, and  oppression,  whereby  this  Chamber  of  Maiden-thought  be- 
comes gradually  darkened,  and  at  the  same  time,  on  all  sides  of  it, 
many  doors  are  set  open — but  all  dark — all  leading  to  dark  passages. 
We  see  not  the  balance  of  good  and  evil ;  we  are  in  a  mist,  we  are  in 
that  state,  we  feel  the  '  Burden  of  the  Mystery.'  " 

A  few  weeks  earlier,  addressing  to  the  same  friend  the  last 
of  his  rhymed  Epistles,  Keats  had  thus  expressed  the  mood 
which  came  upon  him  as  he  sat  taking  the  beauty  of  the 
evening  on  a  rock  at  the  sea's  edge  : 

"  'Twas  a  quiet  eve, 
The  rocks  were  silent,  the  wide  sea  did  weave 
An  untumultuous  fringe  of  silver  foam 
Along  the  flat  brown  sand  ;  I  was  at  home, 
And  should  have  been  most  happy — but  I  saw 
Too  far  into  the  sea,  where  every  maw 
The  greater  or  the  less  feeds  evermore  : 
But  I  saw  too  distinct  into  the  core 
Of  an  eternal  fierce  destruction, 
And  so  from  happiness  I  far  was  gone. 
Still  am  I  sick  of  it,  and  tho'  to-day 
I've  gathered  young  spring  leaves,  and  flowers  gay 
Of  periwinkle  and  wild  strawberry, 
Still  do  I  that  most  fierce  destruction  see — 
The  Shark  at  savage  prey,  the  Hawk  at  pounce, 
The  gentle  Robin,  like  a  Pard  or  Ounce, 
Ravening  a  worm.     Away,  ye  horrid  moods  ! 
Moods  of  one's  mind  !" 

In  a  like  vein,  recalling  to  Bailey  a  chance  saying  of  his, 
"  Why  should  woman  suffer?" — "Aye,  why  should  she?" 


iv.]  EMIGRATION  OF  GEORGE  KEATS.  89 

writes  Keats.  "  'By  heavens,  I'd  coin  my  very  soul,  and  drop 
my  blood  for  drachmas.'  These  things  are,  and  he  who  feels 
how  incompetent  the  most  skyey  knight-errantry  is  to  heal 
this  bruised  fairness,  is  like  a  sensitive  leaf  on  the  hot  hand 
of  thought."  And  again,  "  Were  it  in  my  choice,  I  would 
reject  a  Petrarchal  coronation — on  account  of  my  dying- 
day,  and  because  women  have  cancers.  I  should  not  by 
rights  speak  in  this  tone  to  you,  for  it  is  an  incendiary 
spirit  that  would  do  so." 

Not  the  general  tribulations  of  the  race  only,  but  par- 
ticular private  anxieties,  were  pressing  in  these  days  on 
Keats's  thoughts.  The  shadow  of  illness,  though  it  had 
hitherto  scarcely  touched  himself,  hung  menacingly  not 
only  over  his  brother  but  his  best  friends.  He  speaks  of 
it  in  a  tone  of  courage  and  gayety  which  his  real  appre- 
hensions, we  can  feel,  belie.  "Banish  money  "—he  had 
written  in  FalstafTs  vein,  at  starting  for  the  Isle  of  Wight 
a  year  ago — "Banish  sofas — Banish  wine — Banish  music; 
but  right  Jack  Health,  honest  Jack  Health,  true  Jack 
Health — Banish  Health  and  Banish  all  the  world."  Writ- 
ing now  from  Teignmouth  to  Reynolds,  who  was  down 
during  these  weeks  with  rheumatic  fever,  he  complains 
laughingly,  but  with  an  undercurrent  of  sad  foreboding, 
how  he  can  go  nowhere  but  Sickness  is  of  the  company, 
and  says  his  friends  will  have  to  cut  that  fellow,  or  he 
must  cut  them. 

Nearer  and  more  pressing  than  such  apprehensions  was 
the  pain  of  a  family  break-up  now  imminent.  George  Keats 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  emigrate  to  America,  and  em- 
bark his  capital,  or  as  much  of  it  as  he  could  get  posses- 
sion of,  in  business  there.  Besides  the  wish  to  push  his 
own  fortunes,  a  main  motive  of  this  resolve  on  George's 
part  was  the  desire  to  be  in  a  position  as  quickly  as  possi- 


90  KEATS.  [chap. 

ble  to  help,  or,  if  need  be,  support  his  poet-brother.  He 
persuaded  the  girl  to  whom  he  had  long  been  attached, 
Miss  Wylie,  to  share  his  fortunes,  and  it  was  settled  that 
they  were  to  be  married  and  sail  early  in  the  summer. 
Keats  came  up  from  Teignmouth  in  May  to  see  the  last 
of  his  brother,  and  he  and  Tom  settled  again  in  their  old 
lodgings  in  Well  Walk.  He  had  a  warm  affection  and  re- 
gard for  his  new  sister-in-law,  and  was  in  so  far  delighted 
for  George's  sake.  But  at  the  same  time  he  felt  life  and 
its  prospects  overcast.  He  writes  to  Bailey,  after  his  out- 
burst about  the  sufferings  of  women,  that  he  is  never  alone 
now  without  rejoicing  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  death 
— without  placing  his  ultimate  in  the  glory  of  dying  for 
a  great  human  purpose.  And  after  recounting  his  causes 
of  depression  he  recovers  himself,  and  concludes :  "  Life 
must  be  undergone;  and  I  certainly  derive  some  consola- 
tion from  the  thought  of  writing  one  or  two  more  poems 
before  it  ceases." 

With  reference  to  his  poem  then  just  appearing,  and 
the  year's  work  it  represented,  Keats  was  under  no  illusions 
whatever.  From  an  early  period  in  its  composition  he 
had  fully  realised  its  imperfections,  and  had  written  :  "  My 
ideas  of  it  are  very  low,  and  I  would  write  the  subject 
thoroughly  again  but  I  am  tired  of  it,  and  think  the  time 
would  be  better  spent  in  writing  a  new  romance,  which  I 
have  in  my  eye  for  next  summer.  Rome  was  not  built  in 
a  day,  and  all  the  good  I  expect  from  my  employment  this- 
summer  is  the  fruit  of  experience  which  I  hope  to  gather 
in  my  next  poem."  *  The  habit  of  close  self-observation 
and  self-criticism  is  in  most  natures  that  possess  it  allied 
with  vanity  and  egoism ;  but  it  was  not  so  in  Keats,  who, 
without  a  shadow  of  affectation,  judges  himself,  both  in 
his  strength  and  weakness,  as  the  most  clear-sighted  and 


iv.]  DOUBTS  OF  SUCCESS.  91 

disinterested  friend  might  judge.  He  shows  himself  per- 
fectly aware  that  in  writing  Endymion  he  has  rather  been 
working  off  a  youthful  ferment  of  the  mind  than  produc- 
ing a  sound  or  satisfying  work  of  poetry ;  and  when  the 
time  comes  to  write  a  preface  to  the  poem,  after  a  first  at- 
tempt lacking  reticence  and  simplicity,  and  abandoned  at 
the  advice  of  Reynolds,  lie  in  the  second  quietly  and  beau- 
tifully says  of  his  own  work  all  that  can  justly  be  said  in 
its  dispraise.  He  warns  the  reader  to  expect  "great  inex- 
perience, immaturity,  and  every  error  denoting  a  feverish 
attempt  rather  than  a  deed  accomplished ;"  and  adds  most 
unboastfully  :  "It  is  just  that  this  youngster  should  die 
away :  a  sad  thought  for  me,  if  I  had  not  some  hope  that 
while  it  is  dwindling  I  may  be  plotting  and  fitting  myself 
for  verses  fit  to  live." 

The  apprehensions  expressed  in  these  words  have  not 
been  fulfilled  ;  and  Endymion,  so  far  from  havino-  died  . 
away,  lives  to  illustrate  the  maxim  conveyed  in  its  own 
now  proverbial  opening  line.  Immature  as  the  poem  truly 
is  in  touch  and  method,  superabundant  and  confused  as 
are  the  sweets  which  it  offers  to  the  mind,  still  it  is  a  thing 
of  far  too  much  beauty,  or  at  least  of  too  many  beauties, 
to  perish.  Every  reader  must  take  pleasure  in  some  of  its 
single  passages  and  episodes,  while  to  the  student  of  the 
poetic  art  the  work  is  interesting  almost  as  much  in  its 
weakness  as  its  strength. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Endymion. 

In  the  old  Grecian  world,  the  myth  of  Endymion  and 
Selene  was  one  deeply  rooted  in  various  shapes  in  the 
popular  traditions  both  of  El  is  in  the  Peloponnese,  and  of 
the  Ionian  cities  about  the  Latmian  gulf  in  Caria.  The 
central  feature  of  the  tale,  as  originally  sung  by  Sappho, 
was  the  nightly  descent  of  the  goddess  to  kiss  her  lover 
where  he  lay  spell-bound,  by  the  grace  of  Zeus,  in  ever- 
lasting sleep  and  everlasting  youth  on  Mount  Latinos. 
The  poem  of  Sappho  is  lost,  and  the  story  is  not  told  at 
length  in  any  of  our  extant  classical  writings,  but  only  by 
way  of  allusion  in  some  of  the  poets,  as  Theocritus,  Apol- 
lonius  Rhodius,  and  Ovid,  and  of  the  late  prose-writers, 
as  Lucian,  Apollodorus,  and  Pausauias.  Of  such  ancient 
sources  Keats,  of  course,  knew  only  what  he  found  in  his 
classical  dictionaries.  But  references  to  the  tale,  as  every 
one  knows,  form  part  of  the  stock  repertory  of  classical 
allusion  in  modern  literature;  and  several  modern  writers 
before  Keats  had  attempted  to  handle  the  subject  at 
length.  In  his  own  special  range  of  Elizabethan  readino- 
he  was  probably  acquainted  with  Lyly's  court  comedy  of 
Undimion,  in  prose,  which  had  been  edited,  as  it  hap- 
pened, by  his  friend  Dilke  a  few  years  before ;  but  in  it 
he  would  have  found  nothing  to  his  purpose.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  think  he  certainly  took  hints  from  the  Man 


chap,  v.]  "ENDYMION."  93 

in  the  Moon  of  Michael  Drayton.     In  this  piece  Drayton 
takes  hold  of   two   post-classical  notions  concerning  the 
Endyraion  myth,  both  in  the  first  instance  derived  from 
Lucian— one,  that  which  identifies  its  hero  with  the  visible 
"man   in   the  moon"   of  popular  fancy,  the   other,  that 
which  rationalises  his  story,  and  explains  him  away  as  a 
personification  or  mythical  representative  of  early  astron- 
omy.    These  two  distinct  notions  Drayton  weaves  togeth- 
er into  a  short  tale  in  rhymed  heroics,  which  he  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  a  shepherd  at  a  feast  of  Pan.     Like  most 
of  his  writings,  the  Man  in  the  Moon  has  strong  gleams 
of  poetry  and   fancy  amidst  much  that  is  both   puerile 
and  pedantic.      Critics,  so  far  as  I  know,  have  overlooked 
Keats's  debt  to  it ;   but  even  granting  that  he  may  well 
have  got  elsewhere,  or  invented  for  himself,  the  notion  of 
introducing  bis  story  with  a  festival  in  honour  of  Pan,  do 
not,  at  any  rate,  the  following  lines  of  Drayton  contain 
evidently  the  hint  for  the  wanderings  on   which  Keats 
sends  his  hero  (and  for  which  antiquity  affords  no  war- 
rant) through  earth,  sea,  and  air  ? ! 

"  Endymion  now  forsakes 
All  the  delights  that  shepherds  do  prefer, 
And  sets  his  mind  so  generally  on  her 
That,  all  neglected,  to  the  groves  and  springs 
He  follows  Phoebe,  that  him  safely  brings 
(As  their  great  queen)  unto  the  nymphish  bowers, 
Where  in  clear  rivers  beautified  with  flowers 
The  silver  Naides  bathe  them  in  the  bracke. 
Sometime  with  her  the  sea-horse  he  doth  back 
Among  the  blue  Nereides  ;  and  when, 
Weary  of  waters,  goddess-like  again 


i  In  the  extract  I  have  modernized  Drayton's  spelling  and  endeav- 
oured to  mend  his  punctuation :  his  grammatical  constructions  are 
past  mending. 


94  KEATS.  [chap. 

She  the  high  mountains  actively  assays,. 
And  there  amongst  the  light  Oriades, 
That  ride  the  swift  roes,  Phoebe  doth  resort  : 
Sometime  amongst  those  that  with  them  comport 
The  Hamadriades  doth  the  woods  frequent ; 
And  there  she  stays  not,  but  incontinent 
Galls  down  the  dragons  that  her  chariot  draw, 
And  with  Endymion  pleased  that  she  saw, 

ffounteth  thereon,  in  twinkling  of  an  eye 
tripping  the  winds — " 

Fletcher,  again — a  writer  with  whom  Keats  was  very 
familiar,  and  whose  inspiration  in  the  idyllic  and  lyric 
parts  of  his  work  is  closely  kindred  to  his  own — Fletch- 
er in  the  Faithful  Shepherdess  makes  Chloe  tell,  in  lines 
beautifully  paraphrased  and  amplified  from  Theocritu^ 

"  How  the  pale  Phoebe,  hunting  in  a  grove, 
First  saw  the  boy  Endymion,  from  whose  eyes 
She  took  eternal  fire  that  never  dies  ; 
How  she  convey'd  him  softly  in  a  sleep, 
His  temples  bound  with  poppy,  to  the  steep 
Head  of  old  Latraus,  where  she  stoops  each  night, 
Gilding  the  mountain  with  her  brother's  light, 
To  kiss  her  sweetest." 

The  subject  thus  touched  by  Drayton  and  Fletcher  had 
been  long-,  as  we  have  seen  already,  in  Keats's  thoughts. 
Not  only  had  the  charm  of  this  old  pastoral  nature-myth 
of  the  Greeks  interwoven  itself  in  his  being  with  his  natu- 
ral sensibility  to  the  physical  and  spiritual  spell  of  moon- 
light, but  deeper  and  more  abstract  meanings  than  its 
own  had  gathered  about  the  story  in  his  mind.  The  di- 
vine vision  which  haunts  Endymion  in  dreams  is  for 
Keats  symbolical  of  Beauty  itself,  and  it  is  the  passion  of 
the  human  soul  for  beauty  which  he  attempts,  more  or  less 


v.]  "ENDYHION."  95 

consciously,  to  shadow  forth  in  the  quest  of  the  shepherd- 
prince  after  his  love.1 

The  manner  in  which  Keats  set  about  relating  the 
Greek  story,  as  he  had  thus  conceived  it,  was  as  far  from 
being  a  Greek  or  "classical"  manner  as  possible.  He  in- 
deed resembles  the  Greeks,  as  we  have  seen,  in  his  vivid 
sense  of  the  joyous  and  multitudinous  life  of  nature ;  and 
he  loved  to  follow  them  in  dreaming  of  the  powers  of 
nature  as  embodied  in  concrete  shapes  of  supernatural 
human  activity  and  grace.  Moreover,  his  intuitions  for 
every  kind  of  beauty  being  admirably  swift  and  true,  when 
he  sought  to  conjure  up  visions  of  the  classic  past,  or 
images  from  classic  fable,  he  was  able  to  do  so  often  mag- 
ically  well.  To  this  extent  Keats  may  justly  be  called,  as 
he  has  been  so  often  called,  a  Greek,  but  no  farther.  The 
rooted  artistic  instincts  of  that  race,  the  instincts  which 
taught  them  in  all  the  arts  alike,  during  the  years  when 
their  genius  was  most  itself,  to  select  and  simplify,  reject- 
ing all  beauties  but  the  vital  and  essential,  and  paring 
away  their  material  to  the  quick  that  the  main  masses 
might  stand  out  unconfused,  in  just  proportions  and  with 
outlines  rigorously  clear — these  instincts  had  neither  been 
implanted  in  Keats  by  nature,  nor  brought  home  to  him 
by  precept  and  example.  Alike  by  his  aims  and  his  gifts, 
he  was  in  his  workmanship  essentially  "  romantic,"  Gothic, 
English.  A  general  characteristic  of  his  favourite  Eliza- 
bethan poetry  is  its  prodigality  of  incidental  and  super- 
fluous beauties :  even  in  the  drama  it  takes  the  powers  of 
a  Shakspeare  to  keep  the  vital  play  of  character  and  pas- 
sion unsmothered  by  them,  and  in  most  narrative  poems 
of  the  age  the  quality  is  quite  unchecked.     To  Keats,  at 

1  Mrs.  Owen  was,  I  think,  certainly  right  in  her  main  conception  of 
an  allegoric  purpose  vaguely  underlying  Keats's  narrative. 
5* 


96  KEATS.  [chap. 

the  time  when  he  wrote  Endymion,  such  incidental  and 
secondary  luxuriance  constituted  an  essential,  if  not  the 
chief,  charm  of  poetry.  "  I  think  poetry,"  he  says,  "  should 
surprise  by  a  fine  excess ;"  and  with  reference  to  his  own 
poem  during  its  progress,  "  It  will  be  a  test,  a  trial  of 
my  powers  of  imagination,  and  chiefly  of  my  invention — 
which  is  a  rare  thing  indeed — by  which  I  must  make  4000 
lines  of  one  bare  circumstance,  and  fill  them  with  poetry." 
The  "  one  bare  circumstance  "  of  the  story  was  in  the 
result  expanded  through  four  long  books  of  intricate  and 
flowery  narrative,  in  the  course  of  which  the  young  poet 
pauses  continually  to  linger  or  deviate,  amplifying  every 
incident  into  a  thousand  circumstances,  every  passion  into 
a  world  of  subtleties.  He  interweaves  with  his  central 
Endymion  myth  whatever  others  pleased  him  best,  as 
those  of  Pan,  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  of  Cybele,  of  Alpheus 
and  Arethusa,  of  Glaucus  and  Scylla,  of  Circe,  of  Neptune, 
and  of  Bacchus,  leading  us  through  labyrinthine  trans- 
formations, and  on  endless  journeyings  by  subterranean 
antres  and  aerial  gulfs  and  over  the  floor  of  ocean.  The 
scenery  of  the  tale,  indeed,  is  often  not  merely  of  a  Gothic 
vastness  and  intricacy;  there  is  something  of  Oriental 
bewilderment — an  Arabian  Nights  jugglery  with  space 
and  time — in  the  vague  suddenness  with  which  its  changes 
are  effected.  Such  organic  plan  as  the  poem  has  can  best 
be  traced  by  fixing  our  attention  on  the  main  divisions 
adopted  by  the  author  of  his  narrative  into  books,  and  by 
keeping  hold  at  the  same  time,  wherever  we  can,  of  the 
thread  of  allegoric  thought  and  purpose  that  seems  to 
run  loosely  through  the  whole.  The  first  book,  then,  is 
entirely  introductory,  and  does  no  more  than  set  forth  the 
predicament  of  the  love-sick  shepherd-prince,  its  hero,  who 
appears  at  a  festival  of  his  people  held  in  honour  of  the 


v.] 


ENDYMION."  9V 


god  Pan,  and  is  afterwards  induced  by  his  sister  Peona1 
to  confide  to  her  the  secret  of  the  passion  which  consumes 
him.  The  account  of  the  feast  of  Pan  contains  passages 
which  in  the  quality  of  direct  nature  -  interpretation  are 
scarcely  to  be  surpassed  in  poetry : 

"  Rain-scented  eglantine 
Gave  temperate  sweets  to  that  well-wooing  sun ; 
The  lark  was  lost  in  him  ;  cold  springs  had  run 
To  warm  their  chilliest  bubbles  in  the  grass : 
Man's  voice  was  on  the  mountains ;  and  the  mass 
Of  nature's  lives  and  wonders  puls'd  tenfold, 
To  feel  this  sun-rise  and  its  glories  old." 

What  can  be  more  fresh  and  stirring?  what  happier  in 
rhythmical  movement?  or  what  more  characteristic  of 
the  true  instinct  by  which  Keats,  in  dealing  with  nature, 
avoided  word-painting  and  palette  work,  leaving  all  merely 
visible  beauties,  the  stationary  world  of  colours  and  forms, 
as  they  should  be  left,  to  the  painter,  and  dealing,  as 
poetry  alone  is  able  to  deal,  with  those  delights  which  are 
felt  and  divined  rather  than  seen,  with  the  living  activities 
and  operant  magic  of  the  earth  ?  Not  less  excellent  is  the 
realisation  in  the  course  of  the  same  episode  of  the  true 
spirit  of  ancient  pastoral  life  and  worship :  the  hymn  to 
Pan,  in  especial,  both  expressing  perfectly  the  meaning  of 
the  Greek  myth  to  Greeks,  and  enriching  it  with  touches 
of  northern  feeling  that  are  foreign  to,  and  yet  most  har- 
monious with,  the  original.  Keats  having  got  from  Dray- 
ton, as  I  surmise,  his  first  notion  of  an  introductory  feast 

1  Lempriere  (after  Pausanias)  mentions  Paeon  as  one  of  the  fifty 
sons  of  Endymion  (in  the  Elean  version  of  the  myth) ;  and  in  Spen- 
ser's Faerie  Queene  there  is  a  Parana— the  daughter  of  the  giant 
Corflambo  in  the  fourth  book.  Keats  probably  had  both  of  these 
in  mind  when  he  gave  Endymion  a  sister  and  called  her  Peona. 


98 


KEATS.  [chap. 


of  Pan,  in  his  hymn  to  that  divinity  borrowed  recogniza- 
ble touches  alike  from  Chapman's  Homer's  hymn,  from 
the  sacrifice  to  Pan  in  Browne's  Britannia's  Pastorals,1 
and  from  the  hymns  in  Ben  Jonson's  masque,  Pan's  Anni- 
versary; but  borrowed  as  only  genius  can,  fusing  and  re- 
fashioning whatever  he  took  from  other  writers  in  the 
strong  glow  of  an  imagination  fed  from  the  living  sources 
of  nature : 

"  0  Thou  whose  mighty  palace  roof  doth  hang 
From  jagged  trunks,  and  overshadoweth 
Eternal  whispers,  glooms,  the  birth,  life,  death 
Of  unseen  flowers  in  heavy  peacef  ulness  ; 
Who  lov'st  to  see  the  hamadryads  dress 
Their  ruffled  locks  where  meeting  hazels  darken ; 
And  through  Avhole  solemn  hours  dost  sit,  and  hearken 
The  dreary  melody  of  bedded  reeds — 
In  desolate  places  where  dank  moisture  breeds 
The  pipy  hemlock  to  strange  overgrowth ; 
Bethinking  thee,  how  melancholy  loth 
Thou  wast  to  lose  fair  Syrinx — do  thou  now, 
By  thy  love's  milky  brow  ! 
By  all  the  trembling  mazes  that  she  ran, 
Hear  us,  great  Pan  ! 

0  Hearkener  to  the  loud-clapping  shears, 
While  ever  and  anon  to  his  shorn  peers 
A  ram  goes  bleating  :  Winder  of  the  horn, 
When  snouted  wild-boars,  routing  tender  corn, 
Anger  our  huntsman :  Breather  round  our  farms, 
To  keep  off  mildews  and  all  weather  harms  : 
Strange  ministrant  of  undescribed  sounds 
That  come  a-swooning  over  hollow  grounds, 
And  wither  drearily  on  barren  moors  : 
Dread  opener  of  the  mysterious  doors 


1  Book  1,  Song  4.    The  point  about  Browne  has  been  made  by 
Mr.  W.  T.  Arnold. 


v.]  "ENDYMION."  99 

Leading  to  universal  knowledge — see, 
Great  son  of  Dryope, 

The  many  that  are  come  to  pay  their  vows 
With  leaves  about  their  brows  !  " 

In  the  subsequent  discourse  of  Endymion  and  Peona 
he  tells  her  the  story  of  those  celestial  visitations  which 
he  scarce  knows  whether  he  has  experienced  or  dreamed. 
In  Keats's  conception  of  his  youthful  heroes  there  is  at 
all  times  a  touch,  not  the  wholesomest,  of  effeminacy  and 
physical  softness,  and  the  influence  of  passion  he  is  apt  to 
make  fever  and  unman  them  quite  :  as  indeed  a  helpless 
and  enslaved  submission  of  all  the  faculties  to  love  proved, 
when  it  came  to  the  trial,  to  be  a  weakness  of  his  own 
nature.  He  partly  knew  it,  and  could  not  help  it :  but  the 
consequence  is  that  the  love-passages  of  Endymion,  not- 
withstanding the  halo  of  beautiful  tremulous  imagery  that 
often  plays  about  them,  can  scarcely  be  read  with  pleasure. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  matters  of  subordinate  feeling  he 
shows  not  only  a  great  rhetorical  facility,  but  the  signs 
often  of  lively  dramatic  power ;  as  for  instance  in  the  re- 
monstrance wherein  Peona  tries  to  make  her  brother 
ashamed  of  his  weakness  : 

"  Is  this  the  cause  ? 
This  all  ?     Yet  it  is  strange,  and  sad,  alas  ! 
That  one  who  through  this  middle  earth  should  pass 
Most  like  a  sojourning  demi-god,  and  leave 
His  name  upon  the  harp-string,  should  achieve 
No  higher  bard  than  simple  maidenhood, 
Sighing  alone,  and  fearfully — how  the  blood 
Left  his  young  cheek ;  and  how  he  used  to  stray 
He  knew  not  where ;  and  how  he  would  say,  Nay, 
If  any  said  'twas  love  :  and  yet  'twas  love  ; 
What  could  it  be  but  love  ?     How  a  ring-dove 


100  KEATS.  [chap. 

Let  fall  a  sprig  of  yew-tree  in  his  path ; 
And  how  he  died :  and  then,  that  love  doth  scathe 
The  gentle  heart,  as  Northern  blasts  do  roses. 
And  then  the  ballad  of  his  sad  life  closes 
With  sighs,  and  an  alas  !  Endymion  !" 

In  the  second  book  the  hero  sets  out  in  quest  of  his 
felicity,  and  is  led  by  obscure  signs  and  impulses  through 
a  mysterious  and  all  but  trackless  region  of  adventure. 
In  the  first  vague  imaginings  of  youth,  conceptions  of 
natural  and  architectural  marvels,  unlocalized  and  half- 
realized  in  mysterious  space,  are  apt  to  fill  a  large  part, 
and  to  such  imaginings  Keats  in  this  book  lets  himself  go 
without  a  check.  A  Naiad  in  the  disguise  of  a  butterfly 
leads  Endymion  to  her  spring,  and  there  reveals  herself 
and  bids  him  be  of  good  hope ;  an  airy  voice  next  invites 
him  to  descend  "  Into  the  sparry  hollows  of  the  world ;" 
which  done,  he  gropes  his  way  to  a  subterranean  temple 
of  dim  and  most  un  -  Grecian  magnificence,  where  he  is 
admitted  to  the  presence  of  the  sleeping  Adonis,  and 
whither  Venus  herself  presently  repairing  gives  him  en- 
couragement. Thence,  urged  by  the  haunting  passion 
within  him,  he  wanders  on  by  dizzy  paths  and  precipices, 
and  forests  of  leaping,  ever-changing  fountains.  Through 
all  this  phantasmagoria,  engendered  by  a  brain  still  teem- 
ing with  the  rich  first  fumes  of  boyish  fancy,  and  in  great 
part  confusing  and  inappropriate,  shine  out  at  intervals 
strokes  of  the  true  old-wrorld  poetry,  admirably  felt  and 
expressed — 

"  He  sinks  adown  a  solitary  glen, 
Where  there  was  never  sound  of  mortal  men, 
Saving,  perhaps,  some  snow-light  cadences 
Melting  to  silence,  when  upon  the  breeze 
Some  holy  bark  let  forth  an  anthem  sweet 
To  cheer  itself  to  Delphi," 


v.]  "ENDYMION."  101 

or  presences  of  old  religion  strongly  conceived  and  re- 
alized : 

"  Forth  from  a  rugged  arch,  in  the  dusk  below, 

Came  mother  Cybele — alone — alone — ■ 

In  sombre  chariot ;  dark  foldings  thrown 

About  her  majesty,  and  front  death-pale, 

With  turrets  crowned." 

After  seeing  the  vision  of  Cybele,  Endymion,  still  travel- 
ling through  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  is  conveyed  on  an 
eagle's  back  down  an  unfathomable  descent,  and  alighting, 
presently  finds  a  "jasmine  bower,"  whither  his  celestial 
mistress  again  stoops  to  visit  him.  Next  he  encounters 
the  streams,  and  hears  the  voices  of  Arethusa  and  Alpheus 
on  their  fabled  flight  to  Ortygia ;  as  they  disappear  down 
a  chasm,  he  utters  a  prayer  to  his  goddess  in  their  behalf, 
and  then — 

"He  turn' d — there  was  a  whelming  sound — he  stept, 
There  was  a  cooler  light ;  and  so  he  kept 
Towards  it  by  a  sandy  path,  and  lo ! 
More  suddenly  than  doth  a  moment  go, 
The  visions  of  the  earth  were  gone  and  fled — 
He  saw  the  giant  sea  above  his  head." 

Hitherto  Endymion  has  been  wholly  absorbed  in  his 
own  passion  and  adventures,  but  now  the  fates  of  others 
claim  his  sympathy  :  first,  those  of  Alpheus  and  Arethusa, 
and  next,  throughout  nearly  the  whole  of  the  third  book, 
those  of  Glaucus  and  Scylla.  Keats  handles  this  latter 
legend  with  great  freedom,  omitting  its  main  point,  the 
transformation  of  Scylla  by  Circe  into  a  devouring  mon- 
ster, and  making  the  enchantress  punish  her  rival,  not  by 
this  vile  metamorphosis,  but  by  death  ;  or  rather  a  trance 
resembling  death,  from  which,  after  many  ages,  Glaucus  is 


102  KEATS.  [chap. 

enabled  by  Endymion's  help  to  rescue  her,  and  together 
with  her  the  whole  sorrowful  fellowship  of  true  lovers 
drowned  at  sea.  From  the  point  in  the  hero's  submarine 
adventures  where  he  first  meets  Glaucus, 

"He  saw  far  in  the  green  concave  of  the  sea 
An  old  man  sitting  calm  and  peacefully. 
Upon  a  weeded  rock  this  old  man  sat, 
And  his  white  hair  was  awful,  and  a  mat 
Of  weeds  was  cold  beneath  his  cold  thin  feet " 

— from  this  passage  to  the  end  of  the  book,  in  spite  of 
redundance  and  occasional  ugly  flaws,  Keats  brings  home 
his  version  of  the  myth  with  strong  and  often  exquisite 
effect  to  the  imagination.  No  picture  can  well  be  more 
vivid  than  that  of  Circe  pouring  the  magic  phial  upon  her 
victims,  and  no  speech  much  more  telling  than  that  with 
which  the  detected  enchantress  turns  and  .scathes  her  un- 
happy lover.  In  the  same  book  the  description  of  the 
sunk  treasures  cumbering  the  ocean  floor  challenges  com- 
parison, not  all  unequally,  with  the  famous  similar  passage 
in  Shakspeare's  Richard  III.  In  the  halls  of  Neptune 
Endymion  again  meets  Venus,  and  receives  from  her  more 
explicit  encouragement  than  heretofore.  Thence  Nereids 
bear  him  earthward  in  a  trance,  during  which  he  reads  in 
spirit  words  of  still  more  reassuring  omen  written  in  star- 
light on  the  dark.  Since,  in  his  adventure  with  Glaucus, 
he  has  allowed  himself  to  be  diverted  from  his  own  quest 
for  the  sake  of  relieving  the  sorrows  of  others,  the  hope 
which  before  seemed  ever  to  .elude  him  draws  at  last 
nearer  to  fulfilment. 

It  might  seem  fanciful  to  suppose  that  Keats  had  really 
in  his  mind  a  meaning  such  as  this,  but  for  the  conviction 
he  habitually  declares  that  the  pursuit  of  beauty  as  an  aim 


v.-j  "ENDYMION."  103 

in  life  is  only  justified  when  it  is  accompanied  by  the  idea 
of  devotion  to  human  service.     And  in  his  fourth  book 
he  leads  his  hero  through  a  chain  of  adventures  which 
seem  certainly  to  have  a  moral  and  allegorical  meaning,  or 
none  at  all.     Returning  in  that  book  to  upper  air,  En- 
dymion  before  long  half  forgets  his  goddess  for  the  charms 
of   an   Indian  maiden,  the   sound   of  whose  lamentations 
reaches  him  while  he  is  sacrificing  in  the  forest,  and  who 
tells  him   how  she  has  come  wandering  in  the  train  of 
Bacchus  from  the  east.     This  mysterious  Indian  maiden 
proves  in  fact  to  be  no  other  than  his  goddess  herself  in 
disguise.     But  it  is  long  before  he  discovers  this,  and  in 
the  meantime  he  is  conducted  by  her  side  through  a  be- 
wildering series  of  serial  ascents,  descents,  enchanted  slum- 
bers, and  Olympian  visions.    All  these,  with  his  infidelity, 
which  is  no  infidelity  after  all,  his  broodings  in  the  Cave 
of  Quietude,  his  illusions  and  awakenings,  his  final  farewell 
to  mortality  and  to  Peona,  and  reunion  with  his  celestial 
mistress  in  her  own  shape,  make  up  a  narrative  inextric- 
ably confused,  which   only   becomes  partially   intelligible 
when  we  take  it  as  a  parable  of  a  soul's  experience  in 
pursuit  of  the  ideal.     Let  a  soul  enamoured  of  the  ideal — 
such  would  seem  the  argument — once  suffer  itself  to  for- 
o-et  its  goal,  and  to  quench  for  a  time  its  longings  in  the 
real,  nevertheless  it  will  be  still  haunted  by  that  lost  vision  ; 
amidst  all  intoxications,  disappointment  and  lassitude  will 
still  dog  it,  until  it  awakes  at  last  to  find  that  the  reality 
which  has  thus  allured  it  derives  from  the  ideal  its  power 
to  charm,  that  it  is  after  all  but  a  reflection  from  the  ideal, 
a  phantom  of  it.    What  chiefly  or  alone  makes  the  episode 
poetically  acceptable  is  the  strain  of  lyric  poetry  which 
Keats  has  put  into   the  mouth  of  the  supposed  Indian 
maiden  when  she  tells  her   story.     His  later  and   more 
H 


104  KEATS.  [chap. 

famous  lyrics,  though  they  are  free  from  the  faults  and 
immaturities  which  disfigure  this,  yet  do  not,  to  my  mind  at 
least,  show  a  command  over  such  various  sources  of  imag- 
inative and  musical  effect,  or  touch  so  thrillingly  so  many 
chords  of  the  spirit.  A  mood  of  tender  irony  and  wistful 
pathos  like  that  of  the  best  Elizabethan  love-songs;  a 
sense  as  keen  as  Heine's  of  the  immemorial  romance  of 
India  and  the  East;  a  power  like  that  of  Coleridge,  and 
perhaps  partly  caught  from  him,  of  evoking  the  remotest 
weird  and  beautiful  associations  almost  with4a  word;  clear 
visions  of  Greek  beauty  and  wild  wood -notes  of  Celtic 
imagination — all  these  elements  come  here  commingled, 
yet  in  a  strain  perfectly  individual.  Keats  calls  the  piece 
a  "roundelay,  a  form,"  which  it  only  so  far  resembles  that 
its  opening  measures  are  repeated  at  the  close.  It  begins 
with  a  tender  invocation  to  sorrow,  and  then  with  a  first 
change  of  movement  conjures  up  .image  of  a  deserted 
maidenhood  beside  Indian  streams ;  till  suddenly  with  an- 
other change  comes  the  irruption  of  the  Asian  Bacchus  on 
his  march  ;  next  follows  the  detailed  picture  of  the  god 
and  of  his  rout,  suggested  in  part  by  the  famous  Titian 
at  the  National  Gallery,  and  then,  arranged  as  if  for  music, 
the  challenge  of  the  maiden  to  the  Maenads  and  Satyrs, 
and  their  choral  answers: 

"  '  Whence  came  ye,  merry  Damsels  !     Whence  came  ye  ! 
So  many,  and  so  many,  and  such  glee  ? 
Why  have  ye  left  your  bowers  desolate, 

Your  lutes,  and  gentler  fate  ?' 
'  We  follow  Bacchus,  Bacchus  on  the  wing, 

A  conquering ! 
Bacchus,  young  Bacchus  !  good  or  ill  betide, 
We  dance  before  him  through  kingdoms  wide  : 
Come  hither,  lady  fair,  and  joined  be 

To  our  wild  minstrelsy  !' 


v.]  "ENDYMION."  105 

'  Whence  came  ye,  jolly  Satyrs  !     Whence  came  ye  ! 

So  many,  and  so  many,  and  such  glee  ? 

Why  have  ye  left  your  forest  haunts,  why  left 

Your  nuts  in  oak-tree  cleft  ?' — 
1  For  wine,  for  wine  we  left  our  kernel  tree ; 
For  wine  we  left  our  heath,  and  yellow  brooms, 

And  cold  mushrooms  ; 
For  wine  we  follow  Bacchus  through  the  earth  ; 
Great  God  of  breathless  cups  and  chirping  mirth  ! — > 
Come  hither,  lady  fair,  and  joined  be 

To  our  mad  minstrelsy  !'  " 

The  strophes  recounting  the  victorious  journeys  are  very 

unequal ;  and  finally,  returning  to  the  opening  motive,  the 

lyric  ends  as  it  began,  with  an  exquisite  strain  of  lovelorn 

pathos : 

"Come  then,  sorrow  ! 

Sweetest  sorrow ! 
Like  an  own  babe  I  nurse  thee  on  my  breast : 

I  thought  to  leave  thee, 

And  deceive  thee, 
But  now  of  all  the  world  I  love  thee  best. 

There  is  not  one, 

No,  no,  not  one 
But  thee  to  comfort  a  poor  lonely  maid ; 

Thou  art  her  mother 

And  her  brother, 
Her  playmate,  and  her  wooer  in  the  shade." 

The  high-water  mark  of  poetry  in  Enclymion  is  thus 
reached  in  the  two  lyrics  of  the  first  and  fourth  book.  Of 
these,  at  least,  may  be  said  with  justice  that  which  Jeffrey 
was  inclined  to  say  of  the  poem  as  a  whole,  that  the  de- 
gree to  which  any  reader  appreciates  them  will  furnish  as 
good  a  test  as  can  be  obtained  of  his  having  in  him  "  a 
native  relish  for  poetry,  and  a  genuine  sensibility  to  its  in- 
trinsic charm."     In  the  main  body  of  the  work  beauties 


106  KEATS.  [chap. 

and  faults  are  so  bound  up  together  that  a  critic  may  well 
be  struck  almost  as  much  by  one  as  by  the  other.  Ad- 
mirable truth  and  charm  of  imagination,  exquisite  fresh- 
ness and  felicity  of  touch,  mark  such  brief  passages  as  we 
have  quoted  above ;  the  very  soul  of  "poetry  breathes  in 
them  and  in  a  hundred  others  throughout  the  work;  but 
read  farther,  and  you  will  in  almost  every  case  be  brought 
up  by  hardly  tolerable  blemishes  of  execution  and  of  taste. 
Thus  in  the  tale  told  by  Glaucus  we  find  a  line  of  strong 
poetic  vision,  such  as 

"^Esea's  isle  was  wondering  at  the  moon," 

standing  alone  in  a  passage  of  rambling  and  ineffective 
over-honeyed  narrative;  or  again,  a  couplet  forced  and  vul- 
gar like  this,  both  in  rhyme  and  expression: 

"  I  look'd — 'twas  Scylla  !     Cursed,  cursed  Circe  ! 
0  vulture-witch,  hast  never  heard  of  mercy  ?" 

is  followed  three  lines  farther  on  by  a  masterly  touch  of 
imagination  and  the  heart : 

"  Cold,  0  cold  indeed 
Were  her  fair  limbs,  and  like  a  common  weed 
The  sea-swell  took  her  hair." 

One,  indeed,  of  the  besetting  faults  of  his  earlier  poetry 
Keats  lias  shaken  off — his  muse  is  seldom  tempted  now  to 
echo  the  familiar  sentimental  chirp  of  Hunt's.  But  that 
tendency  which  he  by  nature  shared  with  Hunt,  the  ten- 
dency to  linger  and  luxuriate  over  every  imagined  pleasure 
with  an  over-fond  and  doting  relish,  is  still  strong  in  him. 
And  to  the  weaknesses  native  to  his  own  youth  and  tem- 
perament are  joined  others  derived  from  an  exclusive  de- 
votion to  the  earlier  masters  of  English  poetry.  The  crea- 
tive impulse  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  in  its  waywardness 


v.]  "ENDYMIOX."  107 

and  lack  of  discipline  and  discrimination,  not  less  than  in 
its  luxuriant  strength  and  freshness,  seems  actually  revived 
in  him.  He  outdoes  even  Spenser  in  his  proneness  to  let 
Invention  ramble  and  loiter  uncontrolled  through  what 
wildernesses  she  will,  with  Imagination  at  her  heels  to  dress 
if  possible  in  living  beauty  the  wonders  that  she  finds 
there;  and  sometimes  Imagination  is  equal  to  the  task 
and  sometimes  not :  and  even  busy  Invention  herself  occa- 
sionally flags,  and  is  content  to  grasp  at  any  idle  clue  the 
rhyme  holds  out  to  her : 

" — a  nymph  of  Dian'a 
Wearing  a  coronal  of  tender  scions  " — 

"  Does  yonder  thrush, 
Schooling  its  half-fledged  little  ones  to  brush 
About  the  dewy  forest,  whisper  tales  ? — 
Speak  not  of  grief,  young  stranger,  or  cold  snails 
Will  slime  the  rose  to-night." 

Chapman  especially,  among  Keats's  masters,  had  this  trick 
of  letting  thought  follow  the  chance  dictation  of  rhyme. 
Spenser  and  Chapman — to  say  nothing  of  Chatterton — had 
farther  accustomed  his  ear  to  experimental  and  rash  deal- 
ings with  their  mother-tongue.  English  was  almost  as  un- 
settled a  language  for  him  as  for  them,  and  he  strives  to 
extend  its  resources,  and  make  them  adequate  to  the  range 
and  freshness  of  his  imagery,  by  the  use  of  compound  and 
other  adjectival  coinages  in  Chapman's  spirit — "  far-spoom- 
ing  Ocean,"  "  eye-earnestly,"  "  dead-drifting,"  "  their  surly 
eyes  brow-hidden,"  "nervy  knees,"  "surgy  murmurs" — 
coinages  sometimes  legitimate  or  even  happy,  but  often 
fantastic  and  tasteless,  as  well  as  by  sprinkling  his  nine- 
teenth-century diction  with  such  archaisms  as  "  shent," 
"sith,"  and  "seemlihed"  from  Spenser,  "  eterne"  from 
Spenser  and  William   Browne  ;  or  with   arbitrary  verbal 


108  KEATS.  [chap. 

forms,  as  "  to  folly,"  "  to  monitor,"  "  gordian'd  up,"  to 
"  fragment  up ;"  or  with  neuter  verbs  used  as  active,  as  to 
"  travel  "  an  eye,  to  "  pace  "  a  team  of  horses,  and  vice  versa. 
Hence  even  when  in  the  other  qualities  of  poetry  his  work 
is  good,  in  diction  and  expression  it  is  apt  to  be  lax  and 
wavering,  and  full  of  oddities  and  discords. 

In  rhythm  Keats  adheres  in  Endymion  to  the  method 
he  had  adopted  in  Sleep  and  Poetry,  deliberately  keeping 
the  sentence  independent  of  the  metre,  putting  full  pauses 
anywhere  in  his  lines  rather  than  at  the  end,  and  avoiding 
any  regular  beat  upon  the  rhyme.  Leigh  Hunt  thought 
Keats  had  carried  this  method  too  far,  even  to  the  negation 
of  metre.  Some  later  critics  have  supposed  the  rhythm 
of  Endymion  to  have  been  influenced  by  the  Pharonnida 
of  Chamberlayne :  a  fourth -rate  poet,  remarkable  chiefly 
for  two  things — for  the  inextricable  trailing  involution  of 
his  sentences,  exceeding  that  of  the  very  worst  prose  of 
his  time,  and  for  a  perverse  persistency  in  ending  his  he- 
roic lines  with  the  lightest  syllables — prepositions,  adverbs, 
and  conjunctions — on  which  neither  pause  nor  emphasis  is 
possible.1 

But  Keats,  even   where  his  verse  runs   most   diffusely, 

1  The  following  is  a  fair  and  characteristic  enough  specimen  of 
Chamberlayne : 

"  Upon  the  throne,  in  such  a  glorious  state 
As  earth's  adored  favourites,  there  sat 
The  image  of  a  monarch,  vested  in 
The  spoils  of  nature's  robes,  whose  price  had  been 
A  diadem's  redemption  ;  his  large  size, 
Beyond  this  pigmy  age,  did  equalize 
The  admired  proportions  of  those  mighty  men 
Whose  cast-up  bones,  grown  modern  wonders,  when 
Found  out,  are  carefully  preserved  to  tell 
Posterity  how  much  these  times  are  fell 
From  nature's  youthful  strength." 


v.]  "ENDYMION."  109 

rarely  fails  in  delicacy  of  musical  and  metrical  ear,  or  in 
variety  and  elasticity  of  sentence  structure.  There  is 
nothing  in  his  treatment  of  the  measure  for  which  prece- 
dent may  not  be  found  in  the  work  of  almost  every  poet 
who  employed  it  during  the  half-century  that  followed  its 
brilliant  revival  for  the  purposes  of  narrative  poetry  by  Mar- 
lowe. At  most,  he  can  only  be  said  to  make  a  rule  of  that 
which  with  the  older  poets  was  rather  an  exception  ;  and  to 
seek  affinities  for  him  among  the  tedious  by-ways  of  pro- 
vincial seventeenth-century  verse  seems  quite  superfluous. 

As  the  best  criticism  on  Keats's  Endymion  is  in  his  own 
preface,  so  its  best  defence  is  in  a  letter  he  wrote  six 
months  after  it  was  printed.  "  It  is  as  good,"  he  says, 
"  as  I  had  power  to  make  it  by  myself."  Hunt  had 
warned  him  against  the  risks  of  a  long  poem,  and  Shelley 
against  those  of  hasty  publication.  From  much  in  his 
performance  that  was  exuberant  and  crude  the  classical 
training  and  now  ripening  taste  of  Shelley  might  doubt- 
less have  saved  him,  had  he  been  willing  to  listen.  But 
he  was  determined  that  his  poetry  should  at  all  times  be 
the  true  spontaneous  expression  of  his  mind.  "Had  I 
been  nervous,"  he  goes  on,  "  about  its  being  a  perfect 
piece,  and  with  that  view  asked  advice,  and  trembled  over 
every  page,  it  would  not  have  been  written  ;  for  it  is  not 
in  my  nature  to  fumble.  I  will  write  independently.  I 
have  written  independently  ivithout  judgment.  I  may 
write  independently  and  loith  judgment  hereafter.  The 
genius  of  poetry  must  work  out  its  own  salvation  in  a 
man.  It  cannot  be  matured  by  law  and  precept,  but  by 
sensation  and  watchfulness  in  itself."  How  well  Keats 
was  able  to  turn  the  fruits  of  experience  to  the  benefit  of 
his  art,  how  swift  the  genius  of  poetry  in  him  was  to  work 
out,  as  he  says,  its  own  salvation,  we  shall  see  when  we 
come  to  consider  his  next  labours. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Northern  Tour. — The  Blackwood  and  Quarterly  Reviews. — Death  of 
Tom  Keats. — Removal  to  Wentworth  Place.— Fanny  Brawne.— Ex- 
cursion to  Chichester. — Absorption  in  Love  and  Poetry. — Haydon 
and  Money  Difficulties. — Family  Correspondence. — Darkening  Pros- 
pects.— Summer  at  Shanklin  and  Winchester. — Wise  Resolutions. — 
Return  from  Winchester.     [June,  1818— October,  1819.] 

While  Keats,  in  the  spring  of  1818,  was  still  at  Teign- 
moutb,  with  Entbjmion  on  the  eve  of  publication,  he  had 
been  wavering  between  two  different  plans  for  the  imme- 
diate future.  One  was  to  go  for  a  summer's  walking  tour 
through  Scotland  with  Charles  Brown.  "I  have  many 
reasons,"  lie  writes  to  Reynolds,  "  for  going  wonder-ways  : 
to  make  my  winter  chair  free  from  spleen;  to  enlarge  my 
vision  ;  to  escape  disquisitions  on  poetry,  and  Kingston- 
criticism  ;  to  promote  digestion  and  economize  shoe-leath- 
er. I'll  have  leather  buttons  and  belt,  and  if  Brown  hold 
his  mind, '  over  the  hills  we  go.'  If  my  books  will  keep 
me  to  it,  then  will  I  take  all  Europe  in  turn,  and  see  the 
kingdoms  of  the  earth  and  the  glory  of  them."  A  fort- 
night later  we  find  him  inclining  to  give  up  this  purpose 
under  an  over-mastering  sense  of  the  inadequacy  of  his 
own  attainments,  and  of  the  necessity  of  acquiring  knowl- 
edge, and  ever  more  knowledge,  to  sustain  the  flight  of 
poetry  : 

"  I  was  proposing  to  travel  over  the  North  this  summer.     There  is 
but  one  thing  to  prevent  me.     I  know  nothing — I  have  read  nothing 


chap,  vi.]  NORTHERN  TOUR.  Ill 

— and  I  mean  to  follow  Solomon's  directions,  'Get  learning — get  un- 
derstanding.' I  find  earlier  days  are  gone  by — I  find  that  I  can  have 
no  enjoyment  in  the  world  but  continual  drinking  of  knowledge.  I 
find  there  is  no  worthy  pursuit  but  the  idea  of  doing  some  good  to 
the  world.  Some  do  it  with  their  society  ;  some  with  their  wit;  some 
with  their  benevolence ;  some  with  a  sort  of  power  of  conferring  pleas- 
ure and  good-humour  on  all  they  meet — and  in  a  thousand  ways,  all 
dutiful  to  the  command  of  great  nature.  There  is  but  one  way  for 
me.  The  road  lies  through  application,  study,  and  thought.  I  will 
pursue  it ;  and  for  that  end,  purpose  retiring  for  some  years.  I  have 
been  hovering  for  some  time  between  an  exquisite  sense  of  the  lux- 
urious and  a  love  for  philosophy :  were  I  calculated  for  the  former  I 
should  be  glad  ;  but  as  I  am  not,  I  shall  turn  all  my  soul  to  the  latter." 

After  he  had  come  back  to  Hampstead  in  May,  how- 
ever, Keats  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded,  no  doubt  part- 
ly by  considerations  of  health,  and  the  recollection  of 
his  failure  to  stand  the  strain  of  solitary  thought  a  year 
before,  to  resume  his  original  intention.  It  was  agreed 
between  him  and  Brown  that  they  should  accompany 
George  Keats  and  his  bride  as  far  as  Liverpool,  and  then 
start  on  foot  from  Lancaster.  They  left  London  accord- 
ingly on  Monday,  June  22d.x  The  coach  stopped  for  din- 
ner the  first  day  at  Redbourn,  near  St.  Albans,  where 
Keats's  friend  of  medical-student  days,  Mr.  Stephens,  was 
in  practice.  He  came  to  shake  hands  with  the  travelling- 
party  at  the  poet's  request,  and  many  years  afterwards 
wrote  an  account  of  the  interview,  the  chief  point  of  which 
is  a  description  of  Mrs.  George  Keats.  "  Rather  short,  not 
what  might  be  strictly  called  handsome,  but  looked  like  a 
being  whom  any  man  of  moderate  sensibility  might  easily 
love.  She  had  the  imaginative-poetical  cast.  Somewhat 
singular  and  girlish  in  her  attire.  .  .  .  There  was  something 
original  about  her,  and  John  seemed  to  regard  her  as  a  be- 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  223.  • 

(5 


112  KEATS.  [chap. 

ing  whom  be  delighted  to  honour,  and  introduced  her  with 
evident  satisfaction."1  With  no  other  woman  or  girl 
friend  was  Keats  ever  on  such  easy  and  cordial  terms  of 
intimacy  as  with  this  "Nymph  of  the  downward  smile 
and  side -long  glance"  of  his  early  sonnet  — "  Sister 
George,"  as  she  had  now  become ;  and  for  that  reason,  and 
on  account  of  the  series  of  charming  playful  affectionate 
letters  he  wrote  to  her  afterwards  in  America,  the  portrait 
above  quoted,  such  as  it  is,  seems  worth  preserving. 

The  farewells  at  Liverpool  over,  Keats  and  Brown  went 
on  by  coach  to  Lancaster,  and  thence  began  their  walk, 
Keats  taking  for  his  reading  one  book  only,  the  little 
three-volume  edition  of  Cary's  Dante.  "  I  cannot,"  writes 
Brown,  "  forget  the  joy,  the  rapture  of  my  friend  when  he 
suddenly,  and  for  the  first  time,  became  sensible  to  the  full 
effect  of  mountain  scenery.  It  was  just  before  our  de- 
scent to  the  village  of  Bowness,  at  a  turn  of  the  road,  when 
the  lake  of  Windermere  at  once  came  into  view.  ...  All 
was  enchantment  to  us  both."  Keats  in  his  own  letters 
says  comparatively  little  about  the  scenery,  and  that  quite 
simply  and  quietly,  not  at  all  with  the  descriptive  enthusi- 
asm of  the  modern  picturesque  tourist;  nor  indeed  with 
so  much  of  that  quality  as  the  sedate  and  fastidious  Gray 
had  shown  in  his  itineraries  fifty  years  before.  The  truth 
is  that  an  intensely  active,  intuitive  genius  for  nature  like 
his  needs  not  for  its  exercise  the  stimulus  of  the  continued 
presence  of  beauty,  but  on  a  minimum  of  experience  can 
summon  up  and  multiply  for  itself  spirit  sunsets,  and  glo- 
ries of  dream  and  lake  and  mountain,  richer  and  more  va- 
ried than  the  mere  receptive  lover  of  scenery,  eager  to  en- 
joy but  impotent  to  create,  can  witness  in  a  life-time  of 
travel  and  pursuit.  Moreover,  whatever  the  effect  on  him 
'  Houghton  MSS. 


vi.]  NORTHERN  TOUR.  113 

of  that  first  burst  of  Windermere,  it  is  evident  that  as 
Keats  proceeded  northwards  he  found  the  scenery  some- 
what foreign  to  his  taste.  Besides  the  familiar  home  beau- 
ties of  England,  two  ideals  of  landscape,  classic  and  mediae- 
val, haunted  and  allured  his  imagination  almost  equally : 
that  of  the  sunny  and  fabled  south,  and  that  of  the  shad- 
owed and  adventurous  north ;  and  the  Scottish  border,  with 
its  bleak  and  moorish,  rain-swept  and  cloud-empurpled  hills, 
and  its  unhomely  cold  stone  villages,  struck  him  at  first  as 
answering  to  neither.  "  I  know  not  how  it  is,  the  clouds, 
the  sky,  the  houses,  all  seem  anti-Grecian  and  anti-Charle- 
magnish." 

A  change,  besides,  was  coming  over  Keats's  thoughts 
and  feelings  whereby  scenery  altogether  was  beginning  to 
interest  him  less,  and  his  fellow-creatures  more.  In  the 
acuteness  of  childish  and  boyish  sensation,  among  the  sub- 
urban fields  or  on  sea-side  holidays,  he  had  unconsciously 
absorbed  images  of  nature  enough  for  his  faculties  to  work 
on  through  a  life-time  of  poetry ;  and  now,  in  his  second 
chamber  of  Maiden-thought,  the  appeal  of  nature  yields  in 
his  mind  to  that  of  humanity.  "  Scenery  is  fine,"  he  had 
already  written  from  Devonshire  in  the  spring,  "  but  hu- 
man nature  is  finer."  In  the  Lake  country,  after  climbing 
Skiddaw  one  morning  early,  and  walking  to  Treby  the 
same  afternoon,  where  they  watched  with  amusement  the 
exercises  in  a  country  dancing-school :  "  There  was  as  fine 
a  row  of  boys  and  girls,"  says  Keats, "  as  you  ever  saw; 
some  beautiful  faces,  and  one  exquisite  mouth.  I  never 
felt  so  near  the  glory  of  patriotism,  the  glory  of  making, 
by  any  means,  a  country  happier.  This  is  what  I  like  bet- 
ter than  scenery."  The  same  note  recurs  frequently  in  let- 
ters of  a  later  date. 

From  Lancaster  the  travellers  walked  first  to  Ambleside  ; 


114  KEATS.  [chap. 

from  Ambleside  to  the  foot  of  Helvellyn,  where  they  slept, 
having  called  by  the  way  on  Wordsworth  at  Rydal,  and 
been  disappointed  to  find  him  away  electioneering.  From 
Helvellyn  to  Keswick,  whence  they  made  the  circuit  of 
Derwentwater ;  Keswick  to  Treby,  Treby  to  Wigton,  and 
Wigton  to  Carlisle,  where  they  arrived  on  the  1st  of  July. 
Thence  by  coacli  to  Dumfries,  visiting  at  the  latter  place 
the  tomb  and  house  of  Burns,  to  whose  memory  Keats 
wrote  a  sonnet,  by  no  means  in  his  best  vein.  From  Dum- 
fries they  started  south-westwards  for  Galloway,  a  region 
little  frequented  even  now,  and  then  hardly  at  all,  by 
tourists.  Reaching  the  Kirkcudbrightshire  coast,  with  its 
scenery  at  once  wild  and  soft,  its  embosomed  inlets  and 
rocky  tufted  headlands,  its  views  over  the  glimmering  Sol- 
way  to  the  hazy  hills  of  Man,  Brown  bethought  him  that 
this  was  Guy  Mannering's  country,  and  began  to  tell  Keats 
about  Meg  Merrilies.  Keats,  who,  according  to  the  fashion 
of  his  circle,  was  no  enthusiast  for  Scott's  poetry  and  of 
the  Waverley  novels,  had  read  the  Antiquary  but  not  Guy 
Manneriny,  was  much  struck ;  and  presently,  writes  Brown, 
"  there  was  a  little  spot,  close  to  our  pathway.  l  There,' 
he  said, '  in  that  very  spot,  without  a  shadow  of  doubt,  has 
old  Meg  Merrilies  often  boiled  her  kettle.'  It  was  among 
pieces  of  rock  and  brambles  and  broom,  ornamented  with 
a  profusion  of  honeysuckles  and  roses  and  foxgloves,  and 
all  in  the  very  blush  and  fulness  of  blossom."  As  they 
went  along,  Keats  composed  on  Scott's  theme  the  spirited 
ballad  beginning  "  Old  Meg,  she  was  a  gypsy,"  and  stop- 
ping to  breakfast  at  Auchencairn,  copied  it  out  in  a  letter 
which  he  was  Writing  to  his  young  sister  at  odd  moments, 
and  again  in  another  letter  which  he  began  at  the  same 
place  to  Tom.  It  was  his  way  on  his  tour,  and  indeed  al- 
ways, thus  to  keep  by  him  the  letters  he  was  writing,  and 


tl]  NORTHERN  TOUR.  115 

add  scraps  to  them  as  the  fancy  took  him.  The  system- 
atic Brown,  on  the  other  hand,  wrote  regularly  and  uni- 
formly in  the  evenings.  "He  affronts  my  indolence  and 
luxury,"  says  Keats,  "  by  pulling  out  of  his  knapsack,  first 
his  paper,  secondly  his  pens,  and  last  his  ink.  Now  I 
would  not  care  if  he  would  change  a  little.  I  say  now, 
why  not  take  out  his  pens  first  sometimes?  But  I  might 
as  well  tell  a  lien  to  hold  up  her  head  before  she  drinks, 
instead  of  afterwards." 

From  Kirkcudbright  they  walked,  on  July  5th — skirting 
the  wild  moors  about  the  Water  of  Fleet,  and  passing 
where  Cairnsraore  looks  down  over  wooded  slopes  to  the 
steaming  estuary  of  the  Cree — as  far  as  Newton  Stewart; 
thence  across  the  Wigtonshire  levels  by  Glenluce  to  Stran- 
raer and  Portpatrick.  Here  they  took  the  Donaghadee 
packet  for  Ireland,  with  the  intention  of  seeing  the  Giant's 
Causeway,  but  finding  the  distances  and  expense  exceed 
their  calculation,  contented  themselves  with  a  walk  to  Bel- 
fast, and  crossed  again  to  Portpatrick  on  the  third  day. 
In  letters  written  during  and  immediately  after  this  excur- 
sion, Keats  has  some  striking  passages  of  human  observa- 
tion and  reflection : 

"  These  Kirk-men  have  done  Scotland  good.  They  have  made 
men,  women,  old  men,  young  men,  old  women,  young  women,  hags, 
girls,  and  infants,  all  careful ;  so  they  are  formed  into  regular 
phalanges  of  savers  and  gainers.  .  .  .  These  Kirk-men  have  done 
Scotland  harm ;  they  have  banished  puns,  love,  and  laughing.  To  re- 
mind you  of  the  fate  of  Burns  —  poor,  unfortunate  fellow !  his  dispo- 
sition was  Southern!  How  sad  it  is  when  a  luxurious  imagination 
is  obliged,  in  self-defence,  to  deaden  its  delicacy  in  vulgarity  and  in 
things  attainable,  that  it  may  not  have  leisure  to  go  mad  after  things 
that  are  not !  ...  I  would  sooner  be  a  wild  deer  than  a  girl  under  the 
dominion  of  the  Kirk ;  and  I  would  sooner  be  a  wild  hog  than  be  the 
occasion  of  a  poor  creature's  penance  before  those  execrable  elders." 


H6  KEATS.  [chap. 

"On  our  return  from  Belfast  we  met  a  sedan — the  Duchess  of 
Dunghill.  It  was  no  laughing  matter  though.  Imagine  the  worst 
dog-kennel  you  ever  saw,  placed  upon  two  poles  from  a  mouldy  fenc- 
ing. In  such  a  wretched  thing  sat  a  squalid  old  woman,  squat  like 
an  ape  half-starved  from  a  scarcity  of  biscuit  in  its  passage  from 
Madagascar  to  the  Cape,  with  a  pipe  in  her  mouth,  and  looking  out 
with  a  round-eyed,  skinny-lidded  inanity,  with  a  sort  of  horizontal 
idiotic  movement  of  her  head :  squat  and  lean  she  sat,  and  puffed 
out  the  smoke,  while  two  ragged,  tattered  girls  carried  her  along. 
What  a  thing  would  be  a  history  of  her  life  and  sensations !" 

From  Stranraer  the  friends  made  straight  for  Burns's 
country,  walking  along  the  coast  by  Ballantrae,  Girvan, 
Kirkoswald,  and  Maybole,  to  Ayr,  with  the  lonely  mass  of 
Ailsa  Crag,  and  presently  the  mountains  of  Arran,  loom- 
ing ever  above  the  Atlantic  floor  on  the  left;  and  here 
again  we  find  Keats  taking  a  keen  pleasure  in  the  mingled 
richness  and  wildness  of  the  coast  scenery.  They  went  to 
Kirk  Alloway,  and  he  was  delighted  to  find  the  home  of 
Burns  amid  scenes  so  fair.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
write  a  sonnet  in  the  cottage  of  that  poet's  birth,  and  did 
so,  but  was  worried  by  the  prate  of  the  man  in  charge — 
"a  mahogany -faced  old  jackass  who  knew  Burns:  he 
ought  to  have  been  kicked  for  having  spoken  to  him  " — 
"  his  gab  hindered  my  sublimity :  the  flat  dog  made  me 
write  a  flat  sonnet."  And  again,  as  they  journeyed  on 
towards  Glasgow  he  composed  with  considerable  pains  (as 
Brown  particularly  mentions)  the  lines  beginning  '  There 
is  a  charm  in  footing  slow  across  a  silent  plain.'  They 
were  meant  to  express  the  temper  in  which  his  pilgrimage 
through  the  Burns  country  had  been  made,  but  in  spite  of 
an  occasional  striking  breadth  and  concentration  of  im- 
agery, are  on  the  whole  forced  and  unlike  himself. 

From  Ayr  Keats  and  Brown  tramped  on  to  Glasgow, 
and  from  Glasgow  by  Dumbarton  through  the  Lady  of  the 


TL]  NORTHERN  TOUR.  117 

Lake  country,  which  they  found  vexatiously  full  of  tour- 
ists, to  Inverary,  and  thence  by  Loch  Awe  to  Oban.  At 
Inverary  Keats  was  amused  and  exasperated  by  a  perform- 
ance of  The  Stranger  to  an  accompaniment  of  bagpipe 
music.  Bathing  in  Loch  Fyne  the  next  morning,  he  got 
horribly  bitten  by  gadflies,  and  vented  his  smart  in  a  set 
of  doggerel  rhymes.  The  walk  along  the  shores  of  Loch 
Awe  impressed  him  greatly,  and  for  once  he  writes  of  it 
something  like  a  set  description,  for  the  benefit  of  his 
brother  Tom.  At  the  same  point  occur  for  the  first  time 
complaints,  slight  at  first,  of  fatigue  and  discomfort.  At 
the  beginning  of  his  tour  Keats  had  written  to  his  sister 
of  its  effects  upon  his  sleep  and  appetite ;  telling  her  how 
he  tumbled  into  bed  "  so  fatigued  that  when  I  am  asleep 
you  might  sew  my  nose  to  my  great  toe  and  trundle  me 
round  the  town,  like  a  hoop,  without  waking  me.  Then  I 
get  so  hungry  a  ham  goes  but  a  very  little  way,  and  fowls 

are  like  larks  to  me I  can  eat  a  bull's  head  as  easily  as 

I  used  to  do  bull's  eyes."  Presently  he  writes  that  he  is 
getting  used  to  it,  and  doing  his  twenty  miles  or  more  a 
day  without  inconvenience.  But  now  in  the  remoter  parts 
of  the  Highlands  the  coarse  fare  and  accommodation,  and 
rough  journeys  and  frequent  drenchings,  begin  to  tell  upon 
both  him  and  Brown,  and  he  grumbles  at  the  perpetual 
diet  of  oatcake  and  eggs.  Arrived  at  Oban,  the  friends 
undertook  one  journey  in  especial  which  proved  too  much 
for  Keats's  strength.  Finding  the  regular  tourist  route  by 
water  to  Staffa  and  Iona  too  expensive,  they  were  per- 
suaded to  take  the  ferry  to  the  hither  side  of  the  island  of 
Mull,  and  then  with  a  guide  cross  on  foot  to  the  farther 
side  opposite  Iona :  a  wretched  walk,  as  Keats  calls  it,  of 
some  thirty-seven  miles,  over  difficult  ground  and  in  the 
very  roughest  weather.     By  good  luck  the  sky  lifted  at 


US  KEATS.  [chap- 

the  critical' moment,  and  the  travellers  had  a  favourable 
view  of  Staffa.  By  the  power  of  the  past  and  its  associa- 
tions in  the  one  "illustrious  island,"  and  of  nature's  archi- 
tecture in  the  other,  Keats  shows  himself  naturally  much 
impressed.  Fingal's  Cave  in  especial  touched  his  imagina- 
tion, and  on  it  and  its  profanation  by  the  race  of  tourists 
he  wrote,  in  the  seven-syllable  metre  which  no  writer  since 
Ben  Jonson  has  handled  better  or  more  vigorously,  the 
lines  beginning  "  Not  Aladdin  Magian."  Avoiding  mere 
epithet-work  and  description,  like  the  true  poet  he  is,  he 
begins  by  calling  up  for  comparison  the  visions  of  other 
fanes  or  palaces  of  enchantment,  and  then,  bethinking  him- 
self of  Milton's  cry  to  Lycidas 

"  — where'er  thy  bones  are  hurl'd, 
Whether  beyond  the  stormy  Hebrides  " — 

imagines  that  lost  one  to  have  been  found  by  the  divinity 
of  Ocean,  and  put  by  him  in  charge  of  this  cathedral  of 
his  building.  In  his  priestly  character  Lycidas  tells  his 
latter-day  visitant  of  the  religion  of  the  place,  complains 
of  the  violation  of  its  solitude,  and  ends  with  a  fine  ab- 
ruptness which  is  the  most  effective  stroke  of  art  in  the 

piece :  ^ 

"  So  for  ever  I  will  leave 

Such  a  taint,  and  soon  unweave 

All  the  magic  of  the  place ! l 

So  saying,  with  a  spirit's  glance 
He  dived." 

From  the  exertion  and  exposure  which  he  underwent  on 
his  Scotch  tour,  and  especially  in  this  Mull  expedition,  are 
to  be  traced  the  first  distinct  and  settled  symptoms  of  fail- 
ure in  Keats's  health,  and  of  the  development  of  his  hered- 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  223. 


vi.]  NORTHERN  TOUR.  IVJ 

itary  tendency  to  consumption.  In  the  same  letter  to  his 
brother  Tom  which  contains  the  transcript  of  the  Fino-al 
poem,  he  speaks  of  a  "  slight  sore  throat,"  and  of  being- 
obliged  to  rest  for  a  day  or  two  at  Oban.  Thence  they 
pushed  on  in  bad  weather  to  Fort  William,  made  the  as- 
cent of  Ben  Nevis  in  a  dissolving  mist,  and  so  by  the  6th 
of  August  to  Inverness.  Keats's  throat  had  in  the  mean 
time  been  getting  worse ;  the  ascent,  and  especially  the  de- 
.scent,  of  Ben  Nevis  had,  as  he  confesses,  tried  him  :  fever- 
ish symptoms  set  in,  and  the  doctor  whom  he  consulted  at 
Inverness  thought  his  condition  threatening,  and  forbade 
him  to  continue  his  tour.  Accordingly  he  took  passage 
on  the  8th  or  9th  of  August  from  the  port  of  Cromarty 
for  London,  leaving  his  companion  to  pursue  his  journey 
alone — "much  lamenting,"  to  quote  Brown's  own  words, 
"  the  loss  of  his  beloved  intelligence  at  my  side."  Keats 
in  some  degree  picked  up  strength  during  a  nine  days'  sea 
passage,  the  humours  of  which  he  afterwards  described 
pleasantly  in  a  letter  to  his  brother  George.  But  his 
throat  trouble,  the  premonitory  sign  of  worse,  never  really 
or  for  any  length  of  time  left  him  afterwards.  On  the 
18th  of  August  he  arrived  at  Hampstead,  and  made  his 
appearance  among  his  friends  the  next  day,  "  as  brown 
and  as  shabby  as  you  can  imagine,"  writes  Mrs.  Dilke ; 
"  scarcely  any  shoes  left,  his  jacket  all  torn  at  the  back,  a 
fur  cap,  a  great  plaid,  and  his  knapsack.  I  cannot  tell 
what  he  looked  like."  When  he  found  himself  seated,  for 
the  first  time  after  his  hardships,  in  a  comfortable  stuffed 
chair,  we  are  told  how  he  expressed  a  comic  enjoyment  of 
the  sensation,  quoting  at  himself  the  words  in  which  Quince 
the  carpenter  congratulates  his  gossip  the  weaver  on  his 
metamorphosis.1 

1  Severn  in  Houghton  MSS. 
6*      I 


120  KEATS.  [chap. 

Simultaneously  almost  with  Keats's  return  from  the 
North  appeared  attacks  on  him  in  Blackwood's  Magazine 
and  the  Quarterly  Review.  The  Blackwood  article,  be- 
ing No,  IV.  of  a  series  bearing  the  signature  "Z"  on  the 
"Cockney  School  of  Poetry,"  was  printed  in  the  August 
number  of  the  magazine.  The  previous  articles  of  the 
same  series,  as  well  as  a  letter  similarly  signed,  bad  been 
directed  against  Leigh  Hunt,  in  a  strain  of  insult  so  pre- 
posterous as  to  be  obviously  inspired  by  the  mere  wan- 
tonness of  partisan  licence.  It  is  not  quite  certain  who 
wrote  them,  but  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  they 
were  the  work  of  Wilson,  suggested  and  perhaps  revised 
by  the  publisher,  William  Blackwood,  at  this  time  his  own 
sole  editor.  Not  content  with  attacking  Hunt's  opinions, 
or  his  real  weaknesses  as  a  writer  or  a  man,  his  Edinburgh 
critics  must  needs  heap  on  him  the  grossest  accusations  of 
vice  and  infamy.  In  the  course  of  these  articles  allusion 
had  several  times  been  made  to  "  Johnny  Keats "  as  an 
"  amiable  bardling  "  and  puling  satellite  of  the  arch-offend- 
er and  king  of  Cockaigne,  Hunt.  When  now  Keats's  own 
turn  came  his  treatment  was  mild  in  comparison  with 
that  of  his  supposed  leader.  The  strictures  on  his  work 
are  idle  and  offensive,  but  not  more  so  than  is  natural  to 
unsympathetic  persons  full  of  prejudice  and  wishing  to 
hurt.  "  Cockney  "  had  been  in  itself  a  fair  enough  label 
for  a  hostile  critic  to  fasten  upon  Hunt;  neither  was  it 
altogether  inapplicable  to  Keats,  having  regard  to  the  facts 
of  his  origin  and  training — that  is,  if  we  choose  to  forget 
that  the  measure  of  a  man  is  not  his  experience,  but  the 
use  he  is  able  to  make  of  it.  The  worst  part  of  the  Keats 
review  was  in  its  personalities — "  so  back  to  the  shop,  Mr. 
John,  stick  to  '  plasters,  pills,  ointment  boxes,'  etc." — and 
what  made  these  worse  was  the  manner  in  which  the  ma- 


VI-|  THE  REVIEWS:   BLACKWOOD.  121 

terials  for  them  had  been  obtained.     Keats's  friend  Bailey 
had  by  this  time  taken  his  degree,  and  after  publishing 
a  friendly  notice  of  Endymion  in  the  Oxford  Herald  for 
June,  had  left  the  University  and  gone  to  settle  in  a  cu- 
racy in  Cumberland.     In  the  course  of  the   summer  he 
staid  at  Stirling,  at  the  house  of   Bishop    Gleig,  whose 
son,  afterwards  the  well-known  writer  and  Chaplain-gen- 
eral to  the  forces,  was  his  friend,  and  whose  daughter  (a 
previous  love-affair  with  one  of  the  Reynold  sisters  having 
fallen  through)  he  soon  afterwards  married.     Here  Bailey 
met  Lockhart,  then  in  the  hey-day   of  his  brilliant  and 
bitter  youth,  lately   admitted  to  the  intimacy   of  Scott, 
and  earning  on  the  staff  of  Blackwood  and  otherwise  the 
reputation  and  the  nickname  of  "  Scorpion."     Bailey,  anx- 
ious to  save  Keats  from  the  sort  of  treatment  to  which 
Hunt  had  already  been  exposed,  took  the  opportunity  of 
telling  Lockhart  in  a  friendly  way  his  circumstances  and 
history,  explaining  at  the  same  time  that  his  attachment 
to   Leigh  Hunt  was  personal  and  not  political,  pleading 
that  he  should  not  be  made  an  object  of  party  denuncia- 
tion, and  ending  with  the  request  that,  at  any  rate,  what 
had  been  thus  said  in  confidence  should  not  be  used  to  his 
disadvantage.     To  which  Lockhart  replied  that  certainly 
it  should  not  be  so  used  by  him.     Within  three  weeks 
the  article  appeared,  making  use,  to  all  appearance,  and  to 
Bailey's  great  indignation,  of  the  very  facts  he  had  thus 
confidentially  communicated. 

To  the  end  of  his  life  Bailey  remained  convinced  that 
whether  or  not  Lockhart  himself  wrote  the  piece,  he  must, 
at  any  rate,  have  prompted  and  supplied  the  materials  for 
it.1     It  seems,  in  fact,  all  but  certain  that  he  actually  wrote 

1  Houghton  MSS. 


122  KEATS.  [chap. 

it.1  If  so,  it  was  a  felon  stroke  on  Lockhart's  part,  and  to 
forgive  him  we  must  needs  remember  all  the  gratitude 
that  is  his  due  for  his  filial  allegiance  to,  and  his  immor- 
tal biography  of,  Scott.  But  even  in  that  connection  our 
grudge  against  him  revives  again,  since,  in  the  party  vio- 
lence of  the  time  and  place,  Scott  himself  was  drawn  into 
encouraging  the  savage  polemics  of  his  young  Edinburgh 
friends,  and  that  he  was  in  some  measure  privy  to  the 
Cockney  School  outrages  seems  certain.  Such,  at  least, 
was  the  impression  prevailing  at  the  time;2  and  when 
Severn,  who  did  not  know  it,  years  afterwards  innocently 
approached  the  subject  of  Keats  and  his  detractors  in  con- 
versation with  Scott  at  Rome,  he  observed  both  in  Scott 
and  his  daughter  signs  of  pain  and  confusion  which  he 
could  only  interpret  in  the  same  sense.8  It  is  hard  to  say 
whether  the  thought  of  the  great-hearted  Scott,  the  soul 
most  free  from  jealousy  or  harshness,  thus  associated  with 
an  act  of  stupid  cruelty  to  genius,  is  one  to  make  us  the 
more  indignant  against  those  who  so  misled  him,  or  the 
more  patient  of  mistakes  committed  by  commoner  spirits 
among  the  distracting  cries  and  blind  collisions  of  the 
world. 

The  Quarterly  article  on  Enclymion  followed  in  the 
last  week  of  September  (in  the  number  dated  April),  and 
was  in  an  equally  contemptuous  strain,  the   writer  pro- 

1  Dilkc  (in  a  MS.  note  to  his  copy  of  Lord  Houghton's  Life  and 
Letters,  ed.  1848)  states  positively  that  Lockhart  afterwards  owned 
as  much;  and  there  are  tricks  of  style — e.g., the  use  of  the  Spanish 
Sangrado  for  doctor — which  seem  distinctly  to  betray  his  hand. 

2  Leigh  Hunt  at  first  believed  that  Scott  himself  was  the  writer, 
and  Haydon  to  the  last  fancied  it  was  Scott's  faithful  satellite,  the 
actor  Terry. 

8  Severn  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  ii.,  p.  401. 


VI  j  THE  REVIEWS.  123 

fessing  to  Lave  been  unable  to  read  beyond  the  first  canto, 
or  to  make  bead  or  tail  of  that.     In  tins  case  again  the 
question   of   authorship  must  remain  uncertain  ;  but  Gif- 
ford  as  editor,  and  an  editor  who  never  shrank  from  cut- 
ting a  contributor's  work  to  his  own  pattern,  must  bear 
the  responsibility  with  posterity.     The  review  is  quite  in 
his  manner,  that  of  a  man  insensible  to  the  higher  charm 
of  poetry,  incapable  of  judging  it  except  by  mechanical 
rule   and   precedent,  and  careless  of   the    pain   he   gives. 
Considering  the  perfect  modesty  and  good  judgment  with 
which  Keats  had,  in  his  preface,  pointed  out  the  weaknesses 
of  his  own  work,  the  attacks  are  both  alike  inexcusable. 
They  had  the  effect  of  promptly  rousing  the  poet's  friends 
in  his  defence.     Reynolds  published  a  warm  rejoinder  to 
the  Quarterly  reviewer  in  a  West-country  paper,  the  Al- 
fred; an  indignant  letter  on  the  same  side  appeared  in 
the  Morning  Chronicle  with  the  initials  J.  S.— those  prob- 
ably of  John  Scott,  then  editor  of  the  London  Magazine, 
and  soon  afterwards  killed  by  a  friend  of  Lockhart's  in  a 
duel  arising  out  of  these  very  Blackwood  brawls,  in  which 
it  was  thought  that  Lockhart  himself  ought  to  have  come 
forward.      Leigh  Hunt  reprinted  Reynolds's  letter,  with 
some  introductory  words,  in  the  Examiner,  and  later  in 
his  life  regretted  that  he  had  not  done  more.     But  he 
could  not  have  done  more  to  any  purpose.     He  was  not 
himself  an   enthusiastic  admirer   of  LJndymion,  and  had 
plainly  said  so  to  Keats  and  to  his  friends.     Reynolds's 
piece,  which  he  reprinted,  was  quite  effective  and  to  the 
point;   and,  moreover,  any   formal   defence   of   Keats  by 
Hunt  would  only  have  increased  the  virulence  of  his  ene- 
mies, as  they  both  perfectly  well  knew ;  folly  and  spite 
being  always  ready  to  cry  out  that  praise  of  a  friend  by  a 
friend  must  needs  be  interested  or  blind. 


124  KEATS.  [chap. 

Neither  was  Keats's  demeanour  under  the  lash  such  as 
could  make  his  friends  suppose  him  particularly  hurt. 
Proud  iu  the  extreme,  he  had  no  irritable  vanity ;  and  aim- 
ing in  his  art,  if  not  always  steadily,  yet  always  at  the  high- 
est, he  rather  despised  than  courted  such  success  as  he  saw 
some  of  his  contemporaries  enjoy.  "  I  hate,"  he  says,  "  a 
mawkish  popularity."  Even  in  the  hopes  of  permanent 
fame  which  he  avowedly  cherished,  there  was  nothing  in- 
temperate or  impatient,  and  he  was  conscious  of  perceiving 
his  own  shortcomings  at  least  as  clearly  as  his  critics.  Ac- 
cordingly he  took  his  treatment  at  their  hands  more  coolly 
than  older  and  less  sensitive  men  had  taken  the  like.  Hunt 
had  replied  indignantly  to  his  Blackwood  traducers,  repel- 
ling scorn  with  scorn.  Hazlitt  endeavoured  to  have  the 
law  of  them.  Keats  at  the  first  sting  declared,  indeed,  that 
he  would  write  no  more  poetry,  but  try  to  do  what  good 
he  could  to  the  world  in  some  other  way.  Then  quickly 
recovering  himself,  he  with  great  dignity  and  simplicity 
treated  the  annoyance  as  one  merely  temporary,  indifferent, 
and  external.  When  Mr.  Hessey  sent  for  his  encourage- 
ment the  extracts  from  the  papers  in  which  he  had  been 
defended,  he  wrote : 

"I  cannot  but  feel  indebted  to  those  gentlemen  who  have  taken 
my  part.  As  for  the  rest,  I  begin  to  get  a  little  acquainted  with  my 
own  strength  and  weakness.  Praise  or  blame  has  but  a  momentary 
effect  on  the  man  whose  love  of  beauty  in  the  abstract  makes  him  a 
severe  critic  on  his  own  works.  My  own  domestic  criticism  has  giv- 
en me  pain  without  comparison  beyond  what  Blackwood  or  the  Quar- 
terly could  possibly  inflict ;  and  also  when  I  feel  I  am  right,  no  ex- 
ternal praise  can  give  me  such  a  glow  as  my  own  solitary  repercep- 
tion  and  ratification  of  what  is  fine." 

And  again :  "  There  have  been  two  letters  in  my  defence  in  the 
Chronicle  and  one  in  the  Examiner,  copied  from  the  Exeter  paper, 
and  written  by  Reynolds.    I  don't  know  who  wrote  those  in  the  Chron- 


vi.]  DEATH  OF  TOM  KEATS.  125 

icle.  This  is  a  mere  matter  of  the  moment :  I  think  I  shall  be  among 
the  English  Poets  after  my  death.  Even  as  a  matter  of  present  in- 
terest, the  attempt  to  crush  me  in  the  Quarterly  has  only  brought  me 
more  into  notice,  and  it  is  a  common  expression  among  bookmen,  'I 
wonder  the  Quarterly  should  cut  its  own  throat.'  " 

In  point  of  fact  an  unknown  admirer  from  the  West 
Country  sent  Keats  about  this  time  a  letter  and  sonnet  of 
sympathy,  with  which  was  enclosed  a  further  tribute  in  the 
shape  of  a  £25  note.  Keats  w7as  both  pleased  and  dis- 
pleased. "  If  I  had  refused  it,"  he  says,  "  I  should  have 
behaved  in  a  very  braggadocio,  dunderheaded  manner,  and 
yet  the  present  galls  me  a  little."  About  the  same  time 
he  received,  through  his  friend  Richard  Woodhouse,  a 
young  barrister  who  acted  in  some  sort  as  literary  adviser 
or  assistant  to  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hessey,1  a  glowing  letter 
of  sympathy  and  encouragement  from  Miss  Porter,  "  of 
Romance  celebrity,"  by  which  he  shows  himself  in  his  re- 
ply not  more  flattered  than  politeness  demands. 

Keats  was  really  living,  during  the  stress  of  these  Black- 
wood and  Quarterly  storms,  under  the  pressure  of  another 
and  far  more  heartfelt  trouble.  His  Hampstead  friends, 
before  they  heard  of  his  intended  return  from  Scotland, 
had  felt  reluctantly  bound  to  write  and  summon  him  home 
on  account  of  the  alarming  condition  of  his  brother  Tom. 
He  had  left  the  invalid  behind  in  their  lodgings  at  Well 
Walk,  and  found  that  he  had  grown  rapidly  worse  during 
his  absence.  In  fact  the  case  was  desperate,  and  for  the 
next  few  months  Keats' s  chief  occupation  was  the  harrow- 
ing one  of  watching  and  ministering  to  this  dying  brother. 
In  a  letter  written  in  the  third  week  of  September  he 
speaks  thus  of  his  feelings  and  occupations :  "  I  wish  I 
could  say  Tom  was  better.  His  identity  presses  upon  me 
1  See  Preface,  p.  vii. 


126  KEATS. 


1CUAP 


so  all  day  that  I  am  obliged  to  go  out ;  and  although  I  had 
intended  to  have  given  some  time  to  study  alone,  I  am 
obliged  to  write  and  plunge  into  abstract  images  to  ease 
myself  of  his  countenance,  his  voice,  and  feebleness,  so 
that  I  live  now  in  a  continual  fever.  It  must  be  poison- 
ous to  life,  although  I  feel  well.  Imagine  'the  hateful 
siege  of  contraries ;'  if  I  think  of  fame,  of  poetry,  it  seems 
a  crime  to  me,  and  yet  I  must  do  so  or  suffer."  And 
again,  about  the  same  time,  to  Reynolds :  "  I  never  was  in 
love,  yet  the  voice  and  shape  of  a  woman  have  haunted  me 
these  two  days — at  such  a  time,  when  the  relief,  the  fever- 
ous relief  of  poetry,  seems  a  much  less  crime.  This  morn- 
ing poetry  has  conquered ;  I  have  relapsed  into  those  ab- 
stractions which  are  my  only  life ;  I  feel  escaped  from  a 
new,  strange,  and  threatening  sorrow,  and  I  am  thankful 
for  it.  There  is  an  awful  warmth  about  my  heart,  like  a 
load  of  immortality."  As  the  autumn  wore  on,  the  task 
of  the  watcher  grew  ever  more  sorrowful  and  absorbing.1 
On  the  29th  of  October  Keats  wrote  to  his  brother  and 
sister-in-law  in  America,  warning  them,  in  language  of  a 
beautiful  tender  moderation  and  sincerity,  to  be  prepared 
for  the  worst.  For  the  next  month  his  time  was  almost 
wholly  taken  up  by  the  sick-bed,  and  in  the  first  week  of 
December  the  end  came.  "Early  one  morning,"  writes 
Brown,  "  I  was  awakened  in  my  bed  by  a  pressure  on  my 
hand.  It  was  Keats,  who  came  to  tell  me  that  his  brother 
was  no  more.  I  said  nothing,  and  we  both  remained  silent 
for  a  while,  my  hand  fast  locked  in  his.  At  length,  my 
thoughts  returning  from  the  dead  to  the  living,  I  said, 
'Have  nothing  more  to  do  with  those  lodgings  — and 
alone,  too!  Had  you  not  better  live  with  me?'  He 
paused,  pressed  my  hand  warmly,  and  replied,  'I  think 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  224. 


vl]  REMOVAL  TO  WENT  WORTH  PLACE.  127 

it  would  be  better.'     From  that  moment  lie  was  my  in- 
mate."1 

Brown,  as  has  been  said  already,  had  built  and  lived  "in 
one  part — the  smaller  eastern  part — of  the  block  of  two 
semi-detached  houses  near  the  bottom  of  John  Street, 
Hampstead,  to  which  Dilke,  who  built  and  occupied  the 
other  part,  had  given  the  name  of  Wentworth  Place.2  The 
accommodation  in  Brown's  quarters  included  a  front  and 
back  sitting-room  on  the  ground  floor,  with  a  front  and 
back  bedroom  over  them.  The  arrangement  with  Keats 
was  that  he  should  share  household  expenses,  occupying 
the  front  sitting-room  for  the  sake  of  quiet  at  his  work. 
As  soon,  relates  Brown,  as  the  consolations  of  nature  and 
friendship  had  in  some  measure  alleviated  his  grief,  Keats 
became  gradually  once  more  absorbed  in  poetry,  his  special 
task  being  Hyperion,  at  which  he  had  already  begun  to 
work  before  his  brother  died.  But  not  wholly  absorbed, 
for  there  was  beginning  to  wind  itself  about  his  heart  a 
new  spell  more  powerful  than  that  of  poetry  itself.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  the  flame  caught  him  which  he  had 
always  presciently  sought  to  avoid  "  lest  it  should  burn  him 
up."  With  his  quick  self-knowledge  he  had  early  realised, 
not  to  his  satisfaction,  his  own  peculiar  mode  of  feeling 
towards  womankind.  Chivalrously  and  tremulously  de- 
voted to  his  mind's  ideal  of  the  sex,  he  found  himself  only 
too  critical  of  the  real  women  that  he  met,  and  too  ready 
to  perceive  or  suspect  faults  in  them.  Conscious,  at  the 
same  time,  of  the  fire  of  sense  and  blood  within  him,  he 

1  Houghton  MSS. 

2  The  house  is  now  known  as  Lawn  Bank,  the  two  blocks  having 
been  thrown  into  one,  with  certain  alterations  and  additions  which  in 
the  summer  of  1885  were  pointed  out  to  me  in  detail  by  Mr.  William 
Dilke,  the  then  surviving  brother  of  Keats's  friend. 


128  KEATS.  [chap. 

had  thought  himself  partly  fortunate  in  being  saved  from 
the  entanglements  of  passion  by  his  sense  of  this  differ- 
ence between  the  reality  and  his  ideal.  The  set  of  three 
sonnets  in  his  first  volume,  beginning,  "  Woman,  when  I 
beheld  thee  flippant,  vain,"  had  given  expression  half  grace- 
fully, half  awkwardly,  to  this  state  of  mind.  Its  persist- 
ency is  affirmed  often  in  his  letters. 

"  I  am  certain,"  he  wrote  to  Bailey  from  Scotland,  "  I  have  not  a 
right  feeling  towards  women — at  this  moment  I  am  striving  to  be 
just  to  them,  but  I  cannot.  Is  it  because  they  fall  so  far  beneath  my 
boyish  imagination  ?  When  I  was  a  schoolboy  I  thought  a  fair  wom- 
an a  pure  goddess ;  my  mind  was  a  soft  nest  in  which  some  one  of 
them  slept,  though  she  knew  it  not.  I  have  no  right  to  expect  more 
than  their  reality.  I  thought  them  ethereal,  above  men.  I  find 
them  perhaps  equal  —  great  by  comparison  is  very  small.  ...  Is  it 
not  extraordinary  ? — when  among  men  I  have  no  evil  thoughts,  no 
malice,  no  spleen ;  I  feel  free  to  speak  or  to  be  silent ;  I  can  listen, 
and  from  every  one  I  can  learn  ;  my  hands  are  in  my  pockets,  I  am 
free  from  all  suspicion,  and  comfortable.  When  I  am  among  wom- 
en I  have  evil  thoughts,  malice,  spleen ;  I  cannot  speak,  or  be  si- 
lent; I  am  full  of  suspicions,  and  therefore  listen  to  nothing;  I  am 
in  a  hurry  to  be  gone.  ...  I  must  absolutely  get  over  this  —  but 
how  ?" 

In  a  fine  passage  of  a  letter  to  his  relatives  in  America 
he  alleges  this  general  opinion  of  women,  and  with  it  his 
absorption  in  the  life,  or  rather  the  hundred  lives,  of  im- 
agination, as  reasons  for  hoping  that  he  will  never  marry : 

"  The  roaring  of  the  wind  is  my  wife,  and  the  stars  through  my 
window-panes  are  my  children;  the  mighty  abstract  idea  of  Beauty 
in  all  things  I  have  stifles  the  more  divided  and  minute  domestic 
happiness.  An  amiable  wife  and  sweet  children  I  contemplate  as 
part  of  that  Beauty,  but  I  must  have  a  thousand  of  those  beautiful 
particles  to  fill  up  my  heart.  I  feel  more  and  more  every  day,  as  my 
imagination  strengthens,  that  I  do  not  live  in  this  world  alone,  but 


vi.]  FANNY  BRAWNE.  129 

in  a  thousand  worlds.  No  sooner  am  I  alone  than  shapes  of  epic 
greatness  are  stationed  around  me,  and  serve  my  spirit  the  office 
which  is  equivalent  to  a  King's  Body-guard:  'then  Tragedy  with 
scepter'd  pall  comes  sweeping  by.'  According  to  my  state  of  mind 
I  am  with  Achilles  shouting  in  the  trenches,  or  with  Theocritus  in 
the  vales  of  Sicily ;  or  throw  my  whole  being  into  Troilus,  and,  re- 
peating those  lines,  'I  wander  like  a  lost  soul  upon  the  Stygian  bank, 
staying  for  waftage,' I  melt  into  the  air  with  a  voluptuousness  so  del- 
icate that  I  am  content  to  be  alone.  These  things,  combined  with 
the  opinion  I  have  formed  of  the  generality  of  women,  who  appear 
to  me  as  children  to  whom  I  would  rather  give  a  sugar-plum  than 
my  time,  form  a  barrier  against  matrimony  that  I  rejoice  in." 

But  now  Keats's  hour  was  come.  Since  his  return  from 
Scotland,  in  the  midst  of  his  watching  by  his  brother's 
sick-bed,  we  have  seen  him  confessing  himself  haunted  al- 
ready by  the  shape  of  a  woman.  This  was  a  certain  Miss 
Charlotte  Cox,  a  West  -  Indian  cousin  of  Reynolds's,  to 
whom  he  did  not  think  the  Reynolds  sisters  were  quite 
kind.  A  few  days  later  he  writes  again  how  he  has  been 
attracted  by  her  rich  Eastern  look  and  grace.  Very  soon, 
however,  the  attraction  passed,  and  this  "  Charmian  "  left 
him  fancy-free,  but  only  to  find  his  fate  elsewhere.  A 
Mrs.  Brawne,  a  widow  lady  of  some  little  property,  with 
a  daughter  just  grown  up  and  two  younger  children,  had 
taken  Brown's  house  for  the  summer  while  he  was  away 
in  Scotland.  Here  the  Brawnes  had  naturally  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  Dilkes,  living  next  door ;  the  acquaint- 
ance was  kept  up  when  they  moved  from  Brown's  house 
to  one  in  Downshire  Street  close  by;  and  it  was  at  the 
Dilkes'  that  Keats  met  Miss  Fanny  Brawne  after  his  re- 
turn. Her  ways  and  presence  at  first  irritated  and  after 
a  little  while  completely  fascinated  him.  From  his  first 
sarcastic  account  of  her  written  to  his  brother,  as  well  as 
from  Severn's  mention  of  her  likeness  to  the  draped  figure 


130  KEATS.  [chap. 

in  Titian's  picture  of  Sacred  and  Profane  Love,  and  from 
the  full-length  silhouette  of  her  that  has  been  preserved,  it 
is  not  difficult  to  realise  her  aspect  and  presence.  A  brisk 
and  blooming  very  young  beauty,  of  the  far  from  uncom- 
mon English  hawk  blonde  type,  with  aquiline  nose  and 
retreating  forehead,  sharp-cut  nostril  and  gray-blue  eye,  a 
slight,  shapely  figure  rather  short  than  tall,  a  taking  smile, 
and  good  hair,  carriage  and  complexion — such  was  Fan- 
ny Brawne  externally,  but  of  her  character  we  have  little 
means  of  judging.  She  was  certainly  high-spirited,  inex- 
perienced, and  self  -  confident ;  as  certainly,  though  kind 
and  constant  to  her  lover,  in  spite  of  prospects  that  before 
Jong  grew  dark,  she  did  not  fully  realise  what  manner  of 
man  he  was.  Both  his  men  and  women  friends,  without 
thinking  unkindly  of  her,  were  apparently  of  one  opinion 
in  holding  her  no  mate  for  him  either  in  heart  or  mind, 
and  in  regarding  the  attachment  as  unlucky. 

So  it  assuredly  was ;  so,  probably,  under  the  circum- 
stances, must  any  passion  for  a  woman  have  been.  Stroke 
on  stroke  of  untoward  fortune  had  in  truth  begun  to  fall 
on  Keats,  as  if  in  fulfilment  of  the  constitutional  misgiv- 
ings of  his  darker  moods.  First  the  departure  of  his 
brother  George  had  deprived  him  of  his  chief  friend,  to 
whom  almost  alone  he  had  from  boyhood  been  accustomed 
to  turn  for  relief  in  hours  of  despondency.  Next  the 
exertions  of  his  Scotch  tour  had  over-taxed  his  strength, 
and  unchained,  though  as  yet  he  knew  it  not,  the  deadly 
hereditary  enemy  in  his  blood.  Coming  back,  he  had  found 
the  grasp  of  that  enemy  closed  inexorably  upon  his  brother 
Tom,  and  in  nursing  him  had  lived  in  spirit  through  all  his 
pains.  At  the  same  time  the  gibes  of  the  reviewers,  little 
as  they  might  touch  his  inner  self,  came  to  teach  him  the 
harshness  and  carelessness  of  the  world's  judgments,  and 


vi.]  CHICHESTER :  "  THE  EVE  OF  ST.  AGNES."  131 

the  precariousness  of  his  practical  hopes  from  literature. 
Last  were  added  the  pangs  of  love — love  requited,  indeed, 
but  having  no  near  or  sure  prospect  of  fruition  ;  and  even 
love  disdained  might  have  made  him  suffer  less.  The  pas- 
sion wrought  fiercely  in  his  already  fevered  blood  ;  its  alter- 
nations of  doubt  and  torment  and  tantalising  rapture  sapped 
his  powers,  and  redoubled  every  strain  to  which  bereave- 
ment, shaken  health,  and  anticipations  of  poverty,  exposed 
them.  Within  a  year  the  combined  assault  proved  too 
much  for  his  strength,  and  he  broke  down.  But  in  the 
meantime  he  showed  a  brave  face  to  the  world,  and  while 
anxiety  gnawed  and  passion  wasted  him,  was  able  to  throw 
himself  into  the  labours  of  his  art  with  a  fruitful,  if  a  fitful, 
energy.  During  the  first  few  weeks  of  winter  following 
his  brother's  death  he  wrote,  indeed,  as  he  tells  Haydon, 
"only  a  little  now  and  then,  but  nothing  to  speak  of — be- 
ing discontented,  and  as  it  were  moulting."  Yet  such  work 
as  Keats  did  at  this  time  was  done  at  the  very  height  of 
his  powers,  and  included  parts  both  of  Hyperion  and  The 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes. 

Within  a  month  of  the  date  of  the  above  extract  the 
latter  piece  was  finished,  having  been  written  out  during  a 
visit  which  Keats  and  Brown  paid  in  Sussex  in  the  latter 
part  of  January  (1819).  They  staid  for  a  few  days  with 
the  father  of  their  friend  Dilke  in  Chichester,  and  for  near- 
ly a  fortnight  with  his  sister  and  brother-in-law,  the  Snooks, 
at  Bedhampton,  close  by.  Keats  liked  his  hosts  and  re- 
ceived pleasure  from  his  visit ;  but  his  health  kept  him 
much  indoors,  his  only  outings  being  to  "a  couple  of  dow- 
ager card-parties,"  and  to  a  gathering  of  country  clergy  on 
a  wet  day,  at  the  consecration  of  a  chapel  for  converted 
Jews.  The  latter  ceremony  jarred  on  his  nerves,  and  caused 
him   to   write  afterwards  to  his  brother   an   entertainin<r 


182  KEATS.  '  [chap. 

splenetic  diatribe  on  the  clerical  character  and  physiogno- 
my. Daring-  his  stay  at  Chichester  he  also  seems  to  have 
begun,  or  at  any  rate  conceived,  the  poem  on  theJSve  of  St 
Mark,  which  he  never  finished,  and  which  remains  so  in- 
teresting a  pre-Raphaelite  fragment  in  his  work. 

Returning  at  the  beginning  of  February,  Keats  resumed 
his  life  at  Hampstead  under  Brown's  roof.  He  saw  much 
less  society  than  the  winter  before,  the  state  of  his  throat 
compelling  him,  for  one  thing,  generally  to  avoid  the  night 
air.  But  the  chief  cause  of  his  seclusion  was  no  doubt  the 
passion  which  was  beginning  to  engross  him,  and  to  dead- 
en his  interest  in  the  other  relations  of  life.  The  stages 
by  which  it  grew  on  him  we  cannot  follow.  His  own  ac- 
count of  the  matter  to  Fanny  Brawne  was  that  he  had 
written  himself  her  vassal  within  a  week  of  their  first  meet- 
ing. His  real  first  feeling  for  her,  as  we  can  see  by  his  let- 
ters written  at  the  time,  had  been  one— the  most  perilous 
indeed  to  peace  of  mind — of  strong  mixed  attraction  and 
aversion.  He  might  seem  to  have  got  no  farther  by  the 
14th  of  February,  when  he  writes  to  his  brother  and  sister- 
in-law  in  America,  "  Miss  Brawne  and  I  have  every  now 
and  then  a  chat  and  a  tiff ;"  but  this  is  rather  to  be  taken 
as  an  instance  of  his  extreme  general  reticence  on  the  sub- 
ject, and  it  is  probable  that  by  this  time,  if  not  sooner,  the 
attachment  was  in  fact  avowed  and  the  engagement  made. 
The  secret  violence  of  Keats' s  passion,  and  the  restless 
physical  jealousy  which  accompanied  it,  betray  themselves 
in  the  verses  addressed  To  Fanny,  which  belong  apparent- 
ly to  this  date.  They  are  written  very  unequally,  but  with 
his  true  and  brilliant  felicity  of  touch  here  and  there.  The 
occasion  is  the  presence  of  his  mistress  at  some  dance : 

"  Who  now  with  greedy  looks,  eats  up  my  feast  ? 
What  stare  outfaces  now  my  silver  moon  ? 


vi.]  ABSORPTION  IN  LOVE  AND  POETRY.  133 

Ah  !  keep  that  hand  unravished  at  the  least ; 
Let,  let  the  amorous  burn — 
But,  pr'ythee,  do  not  turn 
The  current  of  your  heart  from  me  so  soon, 
0  !  save,  in  charity, 
The  quickest  pulse  for  me. 

Save  it  for  me,  sweet  love !  though  music  breathe 

Voluptuous  visions  into  the  warm  air, 
Though  swimming  through  the  dance's  dangerous  wreath  ; 
Be  like  an  April  day, 
Smiling  and  cold  and  gay, 
A  temperate  lily,  temperate  as  fair ; 
Then,  Heaven !  there  will  be 
A  warmer  June  for  me." 

If  Keats  thus  found  in  verse  occasional  relief  from  the 
violence  of  his  feelings,  lie  sought  for  none  in  his  corre- 
spondence either  with  his  brother  or  his  friends.  Except 
in  the  lightest  passing  allusion,  he  makes  no  direct  men- 
tion of  Miss  Brawne  in  his  letters ;  partly,  no  doubt,  from 
mere  excess  of  sensitiveness,  dreading  to  profane  his  treas- 
ure ;  partly  because  he  knew,  and  could  not  bear  the 
thought,  that  both  his  friends  and  hers,  in  so  far  as  they 
guessed  the  attachment,  looked  on  it  unfavourably.  Brown 
after  a  little  while  could  hardly  help  being  in  the  secret, 
inasmuch  as  when  the  Dilkes  left  Ilampstead  in  April,  and 
went  to  live  at  Westminster,  the  Brawnes  again  took  their 
house;  so  that  Keats  and  Brown  thenceforth  had  the 
young  lady  and  her  family  for  next-door  neighbours.  Dilke 
himself,  but  apparently  not  till  many  months  later,  writes : 
"  It  is  quite  a  settled  thing  between  John  Keats  and  Miss 
Brawne,  God  help  them.  It's  a  bad  thing  for  them.  The 
mother  says  she  cannot  prevent  it,  and  her  only  hope  is 
that  it  will  go  off.  He  don't  like  any  one  to  look  at  her 
or  speak  to  her."     Other  friends,  including  one  so  inti- 


134  KEATS.  [chap. 

mate  and  so  affectionate  as  Severn,  never  realised  until 
Keats  was  on  his  death-bed  that  there  had  been  an  engage- 
ment, or  that  his  relations  with  Miss  Brawne  had  been  oth- 
er than  those  of  ordinary  intimacy  between  neighbours. 

Intense  and  jealous  as  Keats's  newly  awakened  passion 
was,  it  seemed  at  first  to  stimulate  rather  than  distract  him 
in  the  exercise  of  his  now  ripened  poetic  gift.  The  spring 
of  this  year,  1819,  seems  to  repeat  in  a  richer  key  the  his- 
tory of  the  last ;  fits  of  inspiration  succeeding  to  fits  of 
lassitude,  and  growing  more  frequent  as  the  season  ad- 
vanced. Between  the  beginning  of  February  and  the  be- 
ginning of  June  he  wrote  many  of  his  best  shorter  poems, 
including  apparently  all  except  one  of  his  six  famous  odes. 
About  the  middle  of  February  he  speaks  of  having  taken  a 
stroll  among  the  marbles  of  the  British  Museum,  and  the 
ode  On  Indolence  and  the  ode  On  a  Grecian  Urn,  written 
two  or  three  months  later,  show  how  the  charm  of  ancient 
sculpture  was  at  this  time  working  in  his  mind.  The  fit 
of  morning  idleness  which  helped  to  inspire  the  former 
piece  is  recorded  in  his  correspondence  under  the  date  of 
March  19th.  The  lines  beginning  "Bards  of  passion  and  of 
mirth"  are  dated  the  26th  of  the  same  month.  On  the 
15th  of  April  he  sends  off  to  his  brother,  as  the  last  poem 
he  has  written,  the  ode  To  Psyche,  only  less  perfect  and 
felicitous  than  that  On  a  Grecian  Urn.  About  a  week 
later  the  nightingale  would  be  beginning  to  sing.  Present- 
ly it  appeared  that  one  had  built  her  nest  in  Brown's  gar- 
den, near  his  house. 

"Keats,"  writes  Brown,  "felt  a  tranquil  and  continual  joy  in  her 
song ;  and  one  morning  he  took  his  chair  from  the  breakfast-table  to 
the  grass-plot  under  a  plum,  where  he  sat  for  two  or  three  hours. 
When  he  came  into  the  house,  I  perceived  he  had  some  scraps  of  pa- 
per in  his  hand,  and  these  he  was  quietly  thrusting  behind  the  books. 


vi.]  HAYDON  AND  MONEY  DIFFICULTIES.  135 

On  inquiry,  I  found  those  scraps,  four  or  five  in  number,  contained 
his  poetic  feeling  on  the  song  of  our  nightingale.  The^writing  was 
not  well  legible,  and  it  was  difficult  to  arrange  the  stanzas  on  so 
many  scraps.  With  his  assistance  I  succeeded,  and  this  was  his  Ode 
to  a  NigMingale. .  .  .  Immediately  afterwards  I  searched  for  more  of 
his  (in  reality)  fugitive  pieces,  in  which  task,  at  my  request,  he  again 
assisted  me.  . .  .  From  that  day  he  gave  me  permission  to  copy  any 
verses  he  might  write,  and  I  fully  availed  myself  of  it.  He  cared  so 
little  for  them  himself,  when  once,  as  it  appeared  to  me,  his  imagina- 
tion was  released  from  their  influence,  that  he  required  a  friend  at 
hand  to  preserve  them  " 

The  above  account  perfectly  agrees  with  what  Keats  had 
written  towards  the  end  of  the  summer  before :  "  I  feel 
assured  I  should  write  from  the  mere  yearning  and  fond- 
ness I  have  for  the  beautiful,  even  if  my  night's  'labours 
should  be  burnt  every  morning,  and  no  eye  ever  rest  upon 
them."  And  yet  for  these  odes  Keats  seems  to  have  had 
a  partiality  ;  with  that  to  Psyche,  he  tells  his  brother  he 
has  taken  more  pains  than  with  anything  he  had  ever 
written  before;  and  Haydon  has  told  how  thrillingly,  "in 
his  low  tremulous  under-tone,"  he  recited  to  him  that  to 
the  nightingale  as  they  walked  one  day  in  the  Kilburn 
meadows. 

During  the  winter  and  spring,  while  his  faculties  were 
thus  absorbed  between  love  and  poetry,  Keats  had  suf- 
fered his  correspondence  to  flag,  except  only  with  Hay- 
don, with  his  young  sister  Fanny,  and  with  his  brother 
and  sister-in-law  in  America.  About  Christmas,  Haydon, 
whose  work  had  been  interrupted  by  a  weakness  of  the 
eyes,  and  whose  borrowing  powers  were  for  the  time  being 
exhausted,  had  turned  in  his  difficulties  to  Keats,  of  all 
men.  With  his  usual  generosity  Keats  had  promised, 
only  asking  him  to  try  the  rich  lovers  of  art  first,  that  if 
the  worst  came  to  the  worst  he  would  help  him  with  all 
K 


136  KEATS.  .  [chap. 

he  bad.  Haydon  in  a  few  weeks  returns  to  the  charge : 
"  My  dear  Keats — now  I  feel  the  want  of  your  promised 
assistance.  .  .  .  Before  the  20th,  if  you  could  help  me,  it 
would  be  nectar  and  manna  and  all  the  blessings  of  grati- 
fied thirst."  Keats  had  intended  for  Hay  don's  relief 
some  of  the  money  due  to  him  from  his  brother  Tom's 
share  in  their  grandmother's  gift,  which  he  expected  his 
guardian  to  make  over  to  him  at  once  on  his  application. 
But  difficulties  of  all  sorts  were  raised,  and  after  much  cor- 
respondence, attendance  in  bankers'  and  solicitors'  offices, 
and  other  ordeals  harassing  to  the  poetic  mind,  lie  had  the 
annoyance  of  rinding  himself  unable  to  do  as  he  had 
hoped.  When,  by-and-by,  Haydon  writes,  in  the  true  bor- 
rower's vein,  reproaching  him  with  his  promise,  and  his 
failure  to  keep  it,  Keats  replies  with  perfect  temper,  ex- 
plaining that  he  had  supposed  himself  to  have  the  neces- 
sary means  in  his  hand,  but  has  been  baffled  by  unforeseen 
difficulties  in  getting  possession  of  his  money.  Moreover, 
he  finds  that  even  if  all  he  had  were  laid  on  the  table,  the 
intended  loan  would  leave  him  barely  enough  to  live  on 
for  two  years.1  Incidentally  he  mentions  that  he  has 
already  lent  sums  to  various  friends  amounting  in  all  to 
near  £200,  of  which  he  expects  the  repayment  late,  if  ever. 
The  upshot  of  the  matter  was  that  Keats  contrived  some- 
how to  lend  Haydon  thirty  pounds.  Three  months  later 
a  law-suit,  threatened  by  the  widow  of  Captain  Jennings 
against  Mr.  Abbey,  in  connection  with  the  administration 
of  the  trust,  had  the  effect  for  a  time  of  stopping  his  sup- 
plies from  that  quarter  altogether.  Thereupon  he  very 
gently  asks  Haydon  to  make  an  effort  to  repay  his  loan ; 
who  not  only  made  none  —  "he  did  not,"  says  Keats, 
"  seem  to  care  much  about  it,  but  let  me  go  without  my 
1   See  Appendix,  p.  224. 


VL]  FAMILY  CORRESPONDENCE.  137 

money  almost  with  nonchalance."  This  was  too  much 
even  for  Keats's  patience.  He  declares  that  he  shall  never 
count  Haydon  a  friend  again ;  nevertheless  he,  by-and-by, 
let  old  affection  resume  its  sway,  and  entered  into  the 
other's  interests,  and  endured  his  exhortations  as  kindly 
as  ever. 

To  his  young  sister  Keats's  letters  during  the  same 
period  are  full  of  playful  brotherly  tenderness  and  careful 
advice ;  of  regrets  that  she  is  kept  so  much  from  him  by 
the  scruples  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Abbey  ;  and  of  plans  for 
coming  over  to  see  her  at  Walthamstow  when  the  weather 
and  his  throat  allow.  He  thinks  of  various  little  presents 
to  please  her — a  selection  of  Tassie's  pretty,  and  then 
popular,  paste  imitations  of  ancient  gems  —  flowers — 
drawing  materials — 

"anything  but  live  stock.  Though  I  will  not  now  be  very  severe 
on  it,  remembering  how  fond  I  used  to  be  of  Goldfinches,  Tomtits, 
Minnows,  Mice,  Ticklebacks,  Dace,  Cock  Salmons,  and  all  the  whole 
tribe  of  the  Bushes  and  the  Brooks ;  but  verily  they  are  better  in 
the  trees  and  the  water— though  I  must  confess  even  now  a  partialL 
ty  for  a  handsome  globe  of  gold-fish— then  I  would  have  it  hold  ten 
pails  of  water,  and  be  fed  continually  fresh  through  a  cool  pipe,  with 
another  pipe  to  let  through  the  floor— well  ventilated  they  would  pre- 
serve all  their  beautiful  silver  and  crimson.  Then  I  would  put  it 
before  a  handsome  painted  window,  and  shade  it  all  round  with  Myr- 
tles and  Japonicas.  I  should  like  the  window  to  open  on  to  the 
Lake  of  Geneva— and  there  I'd  sit  and  read  all  day,  like  the  picture 
of  somebody  reading." 

For  some  time,  in  these  letters  to  his  sister,  Keats  ex- 
presses a  constant  anxiety  at  getting  no  news  from  their 
brother  George  at  the  distant  Kentucky  settlement  whither 
he  and  his  bride  had  at  their  last  advices  been  bound.  In 
the  middle  of  April  news  of  them  arrives,  and  he  there- 


138  KEATS.  [chap. 

upon  sends  off  to  them  a  long  journal-letter  which  he  has 
been  writing  up  at  intervals  during  the  last  two  months. 
Among  all  the  letters  of  Keats,  this  is  perhaps  the  richest 
and  most  characteristic.  It  is  full  of  the  varied  matter  of 
his  thoughts,  excepting  always  his  thoughts  of  love  :  these 
are  only  to  be  discerned  in  one  trivial  allusion,  and  more 
indistinctly  in  the  vaguely  passionate  tenor  of  two  son- 
nets which  he  sends  among  other  specimens  of  his  latest 
work  in  verse.  One  is  that  beginning  "  Why  did  I  laugh 
to-night?"  the  other  that,  beautiful  and  moving  despite 
flaws  of  execution,  in  which  he  describes  a  dream  suggest- 
ed by  the  Paolo  and  Francesca  passage  in  Dante.  For  the 
rest  he  passes  disconnectedly  as  usual — "  it  being  an  im- 
possibility in  grain,"  as  Keats  once  wrote  to  Reynolds, 
"for  my  ink  to  stain  otherwise" — from  the  vein  of  fun 
and  freakislmess  to  that  of  poetry  and.  wisdom,  with  pas- 
sages now  of  masterly  intuition,  and  now  of  wandering  and 
uncertain,  almost  always  beautiful,  speculative  fancy,  inter- 
spersed with  expressions  of  the  most  generous  spirit  of 
family  affection,  or  the  most  searching  and  unaffected 
disclosures  of  self-knowledge.  Poetry  and  Beauty  were 
the  twin  powers  his  soul  had  ever  worshipped  ;  but  his 
devotion  to  poetry  seemed  thus  far  to  promise  him  no  re- 
ward either  in  fame  or  bread,  while  beauty  had  betrayed 
her  servant,  and  become  to  him  a  scorching  instead  of  a 
sustaining  power,  since  his  love  for  the  beautiful  in  general 
had  turned  into  a  craving  passion  for  the  beauty  of  a  partic- 
ular girl.  As  his  flesh  began  to  faint  in  the  service  of  these 
two,  his  soul  turned  often  with  a  sense  of  comfort,  at  times 
even  almost  of  ecstacy,  towards  the  milder  divinity  of  Death, 
whose  image  had  never  been  unfamiliar  to  his  thoughts : 

"Verse,  Fame,  and  Beauty  are  intense  indeed, 
But  Death  intenser — Death  is  Life's  high  meed." 


vi.]  DARKENING  PROSPECTS.  139 

When  ho  came  down  from  these  heights  of  feeling,  and 
brought  himself  soberly  to  face  the  facts  of  his  existence, 
Keats  felt  himself  compelled,  in  those  days  while  he  was 
producing,  "  out  of  the  mere  yearning  and  fondness  he 
had  for  the  beautiful, "..poem  after  poem  that  are  among 
the  treasures  of  the  English  language,  to  consider  whether 
as  a  practical  matter  he  could  or  ought  to  continue  to  ap- 
ply himself  to  literature  at  all.  In  spite  of  his  magnani- 
mous first  reception  of  the  Blackwood  and  Quarterly  gibes, 
we  can  see  that  as  time  went  on  he  began  more  and  more 
to  feel  both  his  pride  wounded  and  his  prospects  darkened 
by  them.  Reynolds  had  hit  the  mark,  as  to  the  material 
harm  which  the  reviews  were  capable  of  inflicting,  when 
he  wrote,  the  year  before  :  "  Certain  it  is  that  hundreds 
of  fashionable  and  flippant  readers  will  henceforth  set 
down  this  young  poet  as  a  pitiable  and  nonsensical  writ- 
er, merely  on  the  assertions  of  some  single  heartless  critic 
who  has  just  energy  enough  to  despise  what  is  good." 
Such  in  fact  was  exactly  the  reputation  which  Blackwood 
and  the  Quarterly  had  succeeded  in  making  for  Keats, 
except  among  a  small  private  circle  of  admirers.  Of 
praise  and  the  thirst  for  praise  he  continues  to  speak  in  as 
manly  and  sane  a  tone  as  ever,  especially  in  the  two  son- 
nets On  Fame  ;   and  in  the  Ode  to  Indolence  declares — 

"  For  I  would  not  be  dieted  with  praise, 
A  pet-lamb  in  a  sentimental  farce." 

Again  in  the  same  ode  he  speaks  of  his  "  demon  Poesy  " 
as  "  a  maiden  most  unmeek,"  whom  he  loves  the  better  the 
more  blame  is  heaped  on  her.  At  the  same  time  he  shows 
his  sense  of  the  practical  position  which  the  reviews  had 
made  for  him  when  he  writes  to  his  brother :  "  These  re- 
views are  getting  more  and  more  powerful,  especially  the 


140  KEATS.  [ciiap. 

Quarterly.  ...  I  was  in  hopes  that  as  people  saw,  as  they 
must  do,  all  the  trickery  and  iniquity  of  these  plagues,  they 
would  scout  them ;  but  no,  they  are  like  the  spectators 
at  the  AVestminster  cockpit,  and  do  not  care  who  wins  or 
loses."  And  as  a  consequence  he  adds,  presently,  "  I  have 
been,  at  different  times,  turning  it  in  my  head  whether  I 
should  go  to  Edinburgh  and  study  for  a  physician.  I  am 
afraid  I  should  not  take  kindly  to  it;  I  am  sure  I  could 
not  take  fees;  and  yet  I  should  like  to  do  so;  it  is  not 
worse  than  writing  poems,  and  hanging  them  up  to  be  fly- 
blown on  the  Review  shambles."  A  little  later  he  men- 
tions to  his  sister  Fanny  an  idea  he  has  of  taking  a  voy- 
age or  two  as  surgeon  on  board  an  East  Indiaman.  But 
Brown,  more  than  ever  impressed  during  these  last  months 
with  the  power  and  promise  of  his  friend's  genius,  would 
not  hear  of  this  plan,  and  persuaded  him  to  abandon  it  and 
throw  himself  again  upon  literature.  Keats  being  for  the 
moment  unable  to  get  at  any  of  his  money,  Brown  ad- 
vanced him  enough  to  live  on  through  the  summer;  and 
it  was  agreed  that  he  should  go  and  work  in  the  country, 
and  that  Brown  should  follow  him. 

Towards  the  end  of  July  Keats  accordingly  left  Hamp- 
stead,  and  went  first  to  join  his  friend  Rice  in  lodgings  at 
Shanklin.  Rice's  health  was  at  this  time  worse  than  ever, 
and  Keats  himself  was  far  from  well — his  chest  weak,  his 
nerves  unstrung,  his  heart,  as  we  can  see  by  his  letters  to 
Fanny  Brawne,  incessantly  distracted  between  the  pains 
and  joys  of  love.  These  love-letters  of  Keats  are  written 
with  little  or  none  of  the  bright  ease  and  play  of  mind 
which  make  his  correspondence  with  his  friends  and  fami- 
ly so  attractive.  Pleasant  passages,  indeed,  occur  in  them, 
but  in  the  main  they  are  constrained  and  distressing,  show- 
ing him  a  prey,  despite  his  efforts  to  master  himself  and 


VL]  SHANKLIN.  141 

be  reasonable,  to  an  almost  abject  intensity  and  fretfulness 
of  passion.  An  enraptured  but  an  untrustful  lover,  alter- 
nately rejoicing  and  chafing  at  his  bondage,  and  passing 
through  a  hundred  conflicting  extremes  of  feeling  in  an 
hour,  he  found  in  the  fever  of  work  and  composition  his 
only  antidote  against  the  fever  of  his  love-sickness.  As 
long  as  Rice  and  he  were  together  at  Shanklin,  the  two  ail- 
ing and  anxious  men,  firm  friends  as  they  were,  depressed 
and  did  each  other  harm.  It  was  better  when  Brown  with 
his  settled  health  and  spirits  came  to  join  them.  Soon 
afterwards  Rice  left,  and  Brown  and  Keats  then  got  to 
work  diligently  at  the  task  they  had  set  before  themselves, 
that  of  writing  a  tragedy  suitable  for  the  stage.  What 
other  struggling  man  of  letters  has  not  at  one  time  or  an- 
other shared  the  hope  which  animated  them,  that  this  way 
lay  the  road  to  success  and  competence?  Brown,  whose 
Russian  opera  had  made  a  hit  in  its  day,  and  brought  him 
in  £500,  was  supposed  to  possess  the  requisite  stage  expe- 
rience, and  to  him  were  assigned  the  plot  and  construction 
of  the  play,  while  Keats  undertook  to  compose  the  dia- 
logue. The  subject  was  one  taken  from  the  history  of 
the  Emperor  Otho  the  Great.  The  two  friends  sat  oppo- 
site each  other  at  the  same  table,  and  Keats  wrote  scene 
after  scene  as  Brown  sketched  it  out  to  him,  in  each  case 
without  enquiring  what  was  to  come  next,  until  the  end  of 
the  fourth  act,  when  he  took  the  conduct  of  the  rest  into 
his  own  hands.  Besides  the  joint  work  by  means  of  which 
he  thus  hoped,  at  least  in  sanguine  hours,  to  find  an  escape 
from  material  difficulties,  Keats  was  busily  engaged  by 
himself  in  writing  a  new  Greek  tale  in  rhymed  heroics, 
Lamia.  But  a  cloud  of  depression  continued  to  hang 
over  him.  The  climate  of  Shanklin  was  against  him : 
their  lodgings  were  under  the  cliff,  and  from  the  south- 
east, as  he  afterwards  wrote,  "came  the  damps  of  the  sea, 


142  KEATS.  [chap. 

which  having  no  egress,  the  air  would  for  days  together 
take  on  an  unhealthy  idiosyncrasy  altogether  enervating 
and  weakening  as  a  city  smoke."  After  a  stay  of  five  or 
six  weeks  the  friends  made  up  their  minds  to  change  their 
quarters,  and  went  in  the  second  week  of  August  to  Win- 
chester. The  old  cathedral  city,  with  its  peaceful  closes 
breathing  antiquity,  its  clear-coursing  streams  and  beauti- 
ful elm-shadowed  meadow  walks,  and  the  nimble  and  pure 
air  of  its  surrounding  downs,  exactly  suited  Keats,  who 
quickly  improved  both  in  health  and  spirits.  The  days 
which  he  spent  here,  from  the  middle  of  August  to  the 
middle  of  October,  were  the  last  good  days  of  his  life. 
Working  with  a  steady  intensity  of  application,  he  man- 
aged to  steel  himself  for  the  time  being  against  the  im- 
portunity of  his  passion,  although  never  without  a  certain 
feverishness  in  the  effort. 

His  work  continued  to  be  chiefly  on  Lamia,  with  the 
concluding  part  of  Otho  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  trag- 
edy on  the  story  of  King  Stephen  ;  in  this  last  he  laboured 
alone,  without  accepting  help  from  Brown.  Early  in  Sep- 
tember Brown  left  AVinchester  to  go  on  a  visit  to  Bed- 
hampton.  Immediately  afterwards  a  letter  from  America 
compelled  Keats  to  go  to  town  and  arrange  with  Mr.  Ab- 
bey for  the  despatch  of  fresh  remittances  to  his  brother 
George.  Ho  dared  not,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  venture 
into  the  fire  "  by  going  to  see  his  mistress  at  Hampstead, 
but  staid  apparently  with  Mr.  Taylor  in  Fleet  Street,  and 
was  back  on  the  fourth  day  at  Winchester,  where  he  spent 
the  following  ten  days  or  fortnight  in  solitude.  During 
this  interval  he  took  up  Hyperion  again,  but  made  up  his 
mind  to  go  no  farther  with  it,  having  got  to  feel  its  style 
and  method  too  Miltonic  and  artificial.  Lamia  he  had  fin- 
ished, and  his  chief  present  occupation  was  in  revising  the 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  studying  Italian  in  the  pages  of  Ariosto, 


VL]  WINCHESTERr-WISE  RESOLUTIONS.  143 

and  writing  up  one  of  his  long  and  full  journal-letters  to 
brother  and  sister  George.  The  season  was  fine,  and  the 
beauty  of  the  walks  and  the  weather  entering  into  his 
spirit,"  prompted  also  in  these  days  the  last,  and  one  cer^ 
tainly  of  the  happiest  of  his  odes,  that  To  Autumn.  To 
the  fragment  of  St.  Mark's  Eve,  begun  or  planned,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  January  before,  he  now  added  lines  inspired 
at  once  by  the  spirit  of  city  quietude,  which  his  lettera 
show  to  have  affected  him  deeply  here  at  Winchester,  and 
by  the  literary  example  of  Chatterton,  for  whom  his  old 
admiration  had  of  late  returned  in  full  force. 

The  wholesome  brightness  of  the  early  autumn  continu- 
ing to  sustain  and  soothe  him,  Keats  made  in  these  days  a 
vigorous  effort  to  rally  his  moral  powers,  to  banish  over- 
passionate  and  morbid  feelings,  and  to  put  himself  on  a 
right  footing  with  the  world.  The  letter  to  America  al- 
ready mentioned,  and  others  written  at  the  same  time  to 
Reynolds,  Taylor,  Dilke,  Brown,  and  Haydon,  are  full  of 
evidences  of  this  spirit.  The  ill  success  of  his  brother  in 
his  American  speculations  shall  serve,  he  is  determined,  as 
a  spur  to  his  own  exertions;  and  now  that  real  troubles  are 
upon  them,  he  will  show  that  he  can  bear  them  better  than 
those  of  imagination.  The  imaginary  nail  a  man  down 
for  a  sufferer,  as  on  a  cross;  the  real  spur  him  up  into  an 
agent.  He  has  been  passing  his  time  between  reading, 
writing,  and  fretting;  the  last  he  now  intends  to  give  up, 
and  stick  to  the  other  two.  He  does  not  consider  he  has 
any  just  cause  of  complaint  against  the  world;  he  has 
done  nothing  as  yet  except  for  the  amusement  of  a  few 
people  predisposed  for  sentiment,  and  is  convinced  that 
anything  really  fine  will  make  its  way.  "What  reviewers 
can  put  a  hindrance  to  must  be  a  nothing— or  mediocre, 
which  is  worse."     With  reference  to  his  own  plans  for  the 


144  KEATS.  [chap.  yi. 

future,  lie  is  determined  to  trust  no  longer  to  mere  hopes 
of  ultimate  success,  whether  from  plays  or  poems,  but  to 
turn  to  the  natural  resource  of  a  man  "fit  for  nothing  but 
literature,"  and  needing  to  support  himself  by  his  pen  :  the 
resource,  that  is,  of  journalism  and  reviewing.  "  I  will 
write,  on  the  liberal  side  of  the  question,  for  whoever  will 
pay  me.  I  have  not  known  yet  what  it  is  to  be  diligent. 
I  purpose  living  in  town  in  a  cheap  lodging,  and  endeav- 
ouring, for  a  beginning,  to  get  the  theatricals  of  some  pa- 
per. When  I  can  afford  to  compose  deliberate  poems,  I 
wTill."  These  words  are  from  a  letter  written  to  Brown  on 
the  22d  of  September ;  and  further  on  in  the  same  letter 
we  find  evidence  of  the  honourable  spirit  of  independence 
and  unselfishness  towards  his  friends  which  went  together 
in  Keats,  as  it  too  rarely  does,  with  an  affectionate  willing- 
ness to  accept  their  services  at  a  pinch.  He  had  been  liv- 
ing since  May  on  a  loan  from  Brown  and  an  advance  from 
Taylor,  and  was  uneasy  at  putting  the  former  to  a  sacrifice. 
The  subject,  he  says,  is  often  in  his  mind, 

"and  the  end  of  my  speculations  is  always  an  anxiety  for  your 
happiness.  This  anxiety  will  not  be  one  of  the  least  incitements  to 
the  plan  I  propose  pursuing.  I  had  got  into  a  habit  of  mind  of  look- 
ing towards  you  as  a  help  in  all  difficulties.  You  will  see  it  is  a  duty  I 
owe  myself  to  break  the  neck  of  it.  I  do  nothing  for  my  subsistence 
— make  no  exertion.  At  the  end  of  another  year  you  shall  applaud 
me,  not  for  verses,  but  for  conduct." 

Brown,  returning  to  Winchester  a  few  days  later,  found 
his  friend  unshaken  in  the  same  healthy  resolutions,  and 
however  loth  to  lose  his  company,  and  doubtful  of  his  pow- 
er to  live  the  life  he  proposed,  respected  their  motives  too 
much  to  contend  against  them.  It  was  accordingly  settled 
that  the  two  friends  should  part,  Brown  returning  to  his 
own  house  at  Hampstead,  while  Keats  went  to  live  by  him- 
self in  London,  and  look  out  for  employment  on  the  press. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Isabella. — Hyperion. —  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes. —  The  Eve  of  St.  Mark. — 
La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci. — Lamia. — The  Odes. — The  Plays. 

During  the  twenty  months  ending  with  his  return  from 
Winchester,  as  last  narrated,  Keats  had  been  able,  even 
while  health  and  peace  of  mind  and  heart  deserted  him,  to 
produce  in  quick  succession  the  series  of  poems  which 
give  us  the  true  measure  of  his  powers.  In  the  sketches 
and  epistles  of  his  first  volume  we  have  seen  him  begin- 
ning, timidly  and  with  no  clearness  of  aim,  to  make  trial 
of  his  poetical  resources.  A  year  afterwards  he  had  leapt, 
to  use  his  own  words,  headlong  into  the  sea,  and  boldly 
tried  his  strength  on  the  composition  of  a  long  mythologi- 
cal romance  —  half  romance,  half  parable  of  that  passion 
for  universal  beauty  of  which  he  felt  in  his  own  bosom 
the  restless  and  compulsive  workings.  In  the  execution 
he  had  done  injustice  to  the  power  of  poetry  that  was  in 
him  by  letting  both  the  exuberance  of  fancy  and  inven- 
tion, and  the  caprice  of  rhyme,  run  away  with  him,  and  by 
substituting  for  the  worn-out  verbal  currency  of  the  last 
century  a  semi-Elizabethan  coinage  of  his  own,  less  accept- 
able by  habit  to  the  literary  sense,  and  often  of  not  a  whit 
greater  real  poetic  value.  The  experiment  was  rash,  but 
when  he  next  wrote,  it  became  manifest  that  it  had  not 
been  made  in  vain.  After  Endymion  his  work  threw  off, 
not  indeed  entirely  its  faults,  but  all  its  weakness  and  in- 


146  KEATS.  [chap. 

effectiveness,  and  shone  for  the  first  time  with  a  full  "  ef- 
fluence" (the  phrase  is  Landor's)  "  of  power  and  light."1 

His  next  poem  of  importance  was  Isabella,  planned  and 
begun,  as  we  saw,  in  February,  1818,  and  finished  in  the 
course  of  the  next  two  months  at  Teignmouth.  The  sub- 
ject is  taken  from  the  well-known  chapter  of  Boccaccio 
which  tells  of  the  love  borne  by  a  damsel  of  Messina  for  a 
youth  in  the  employ  of  her  merchant -brothers,  with  its 
tragic  close  and  pathetic  sequel.2  Keats  for  some  reason 
transfers  the  scene  of  the  story  from  Messina  to  Florence. 
Nothing  can  be  less  sentimental  than  Boccaccio's  temper, 
nothing  more  direct  and  free  from  superfluity  than  his 
style.  Keats,  invoking  him,  asks  pardon  for  his  own  work 
as  what  it  truly  is — "  An  echo  of  thee  in  the  North-wind 
sung."  Not  only  does  the  English  poet  set  the  southern 
story  in  a  framework  of  northern  landscape,  telling  us  of 
the  Arno,  for  instance,  how  its  stream 

"  Gurgles  through  straitened  banks,  and  still  doth  fan 
Itself  with  dancing  bulrush,  and  the  bream 
Keeps  head  against  the  freshets," 

he  further  adorns  and  amplifies  it  in  a  northern  manner, 
enriching  it  with  tones  of  sentiment  and  colours  of  romance, 
and  brooding  over  every  image  of  beauty  or  passion  as  he 
calls  it  up.  These  things  he  docs — but  no  longer  inordi- 
nately, as  heretofore.     His  powers  of  imagination  and  of 

1  See  Appendix,  p.  224. 

2  Decctmcrone,  Giorn.,  iv.  nov.  5.  A  very  different  metrical  treat- 
ment of  the  same  subject  was  attempted  and  published,  almost  simul- 
taneously with  that  of  Keats,  by  Barry  Cornwall  in  his  Sicilian  Story 
(1820).  Of  the  metrical  tales  from  Boccaccio  which  Reynolds  had 
agreed  to  write  concurrently  with  Keats  (see  above,  p.  85),  two  were 
finished  and  published  by  him  after  Keats's  death  in  the  volume  called 
A  Garden  of  Florence  (1821). 


vil]  "ISABELLA."  147 

expression  have  alike  gained  strength  and  discipline ;  and 
through  the  shining  veils  of  his  poetry  his  creations  make 
themselves  seen  and  felt  in  living  shape,  action,  and  motive. 
False  touches  and  misplaced  beauties  are  indeed  not  want- 
ing.    For  example,  in  the  phrase 

"his  erewhile  timid  lips  grew  bold 
And  poesied  with  hers  in  dewy  rhyme," 

we  have  an  effusively  false  touch,  in  the  sugared  taste  not 
infrequent  in  his  earliest  verses.  And  in  the  call  of  the 
wicked  brothers  to  Lorenzo — 

"  To-day  we  purpose,  aye  this  hour  we  mount 
To  spur  three  leagues  towards  the  Apennine. 
Come  down,  we  pray  thee,  ere  the  hot  sun  count 
His  dewy  rosary  on  the  eglantine" — 

the  last  two  lines  are  a  beauty,  indeed,  and  of  the  kind 
most  characteristic  of  the  poet,  yet  a  beauty  (as  Leigh 
Hunt  long  ago  pointed  out)  misplaced  in  the  mouths  that 
utter  it.  Moreover,  the  language  of  Isabella  is  still  occa- 
sionally slipshod,  and  there  are  turns  and  passages  where 
we  feel,  as  we  felt  so  often  in  Endymion,  that  the  poetic 
will  has  abdicated  to  obey  the  chance  dictation  or  sugges- 
tion of  the  rhyme.  But  these  are  the  minor  blemishes  of 
a  poem  otherwise  conspicuous  for  power  and  charm. 

For  his  Italian  story  Keats  chose  an  Italian  metre,  the 
octave  stanza  introduced  in  English  by  Wyatt  and  Sidney, 
and  naturalised  before  long  by  Daniel,  Drayton,  and  Ed- 
ward Fairfax.  Since  their  day  the  stanza  had  been  little 
used  in  serious  poetry,  though  Frere  and  Byron  had  lately 
revived  it  for  the  poetry  of  light  narrative  and  satire,  the 
purpose  for  which  the  epigrammatic  snap  and  suddenness 
of  the  closing  couplet  in  truth  best  fit  it,  Keats,  however, 
contrived  generally  to  avoid  this  effect,  and  handles  the 


148  KEATS.  [chap. 

measure  flowingly  and  well  in  a  manner  suited  to  his  tale 
of  pathos.  Over  the  purely  musical  and  emotional  re- 
sources of  his  art  he  shows  a  singular  command  in  stanzas 
like  that  beginning,  "  0  Melancholy,  linger  here  awhile," 
repeated  with  variations  as  a  kind  of  melodious  interlude 
of  the  main  narrative.  And  there  is  a  brilliant  alertness 
of  imagination  in  such  episodical  passages  as  that  where 
he  pauses  to  realise  the  varieties  of  human  toil  contribut- 
ing to  the  wealth  of  the  merchant  brothers.  But  the  true 
test  of  a  poem  like  this  is  that  it  should  combine,  at  the 
essential  points  and  central  moments  of  action  and  passion, 
imaginative  vitality  and  truth  with  beauty  and  charm. 
This  test  Isabella  admirably  bears.  For  instance,  in  the 
account  of  the  vision  which  appears  to  the  heroine  of  her 
lover's  mouldering  corpse : 

"  Its  eyes,  though  wild,  were  still  all  dewy-bright 
With  love,  and  kept  all  phantom  fear  aloof 
From  the  poor  girl  by  magic  of  their  light." 

With  what  a  true  poignancy  of  human  tenderness  is  the 
story  of  the  apparition  invested  by  this  touch,  and  all  its 
charnel  horror  and  grimness  mitigated !  Or  again  in  the 
stanzas  describing  Isabella's  actions  at  her  lover's  burial- 
place  : 

"  She  gazed  into  the  fresh  thrown  mould,  as  though 
One  glance  did  fully  all  its  secrets  tell ; 
Clearly  she  saw,  as  other  eyes  would  know, 

Pale  limbs  at  bottom  of  a  crystal  well ; 
Upon  the  murderous  spot  she  seem'd  to  grow, 

Like  to  a  native  lily  of  the  dell : 
Then  with  her  knife,  all  sudden,  she  began 
To  dig  more  fervently  than  misers  can. 

"  Soon  she  turn'd  up  a  soiled  glove,  whereon 
Her  silk  had  play'd  in  purple  phantasies ; 


vil]  "  ISABELLA."  149 

She  kiss'd  it  with  a  lip  more  chill  than  stone, 
And  put  it  in  her  bosom,  where  it  dries 

And  freezes  utterly  unto  the  bone 

Those  dainties  made  to  still  an  infant's  cries : 

Then  'gan  she  work  again ;  nor  stay'd  her  care, 

But  to  throw  back  at  times  her  veiling  hair." 


The  lines  are  not  all  of  equal  workmanship,  but  the  scene 
is  realised  with  unerring  vision.  The  swift  despairing 
gaze  of  the  girl,  anticipating  with  too  dire  a  certainty  the 
realisation  of  her  dream ;  the  simile  in  the  third  and 
fourth  lines,  emphasizing  the  clearness  of  that  certainty, 
and  at  the  same  time  relieving  its  terror  by  an  image  of 
beauty ;  the  new  simile  of  the  \i\y,  again  striking  the  note 
of  beauty,  while  it  intensifies  the  impression  of  her  rooted 
fixity  of  posture  and  purpose ;  the  sudden  solution  of  that 
fixity,  with  the  final  couplet,  into  vehement  action,  as  she 
begins  to  dig  "  more  fervently  than  misers  can  "  (what  a 
commentary  on  the  relative  strength  of  passions  might  be 
drawn  from  this  simple  text!) ;  then  the  first  reward  of  her 
toil,  in  the  shape  of  a  relic,  not  ghastly,  but  beautiful  both 
in  itself  and  for  the  tenderness  of  which  it  is  a  token ;  her 
womanly  action  in  kissing  it  and  putting  it  in  her  bosom, 
while  all  the  woman  and  mother  in  her  is  in  the  same 
words  revealed  to  us  as  blighted  by  the  tragedy  of  her 
life;  then  the  resumption  and  continuance  of  her  labours, 
with  gestures  once  more  of  vital  dramatic  truth  as  well  as 
grace — to  imagine  and  to  write  like  this  is  the  privilege  of 
the  best  poets  only,  and  even  the  best  have  not  often  com- 
bined such  concentrated  force  and  beauty  of  conception 
with  such  a  limpid  and  flowing  ease  of  narrative.  Poetry 
had  always  come  to  Keats,  as  he  considered  it  ought  to 
come,  as  naturally  as  leaves  to  a  tree ;  and  now  that  it 
came  of  a  quality  like  this,  he  had  fairly  earned  the  right, 


150  KEATS.'  [chap. 

which  his  rash  youth  had  too  soon  arrogated,  to  look  down 
on  the  fine  artificers  of  the  school  of  Pope.  In  compari- 
son with  the  illuminating  power  of  true  imaginative  poe- 
try, the  closest  rhetorical  condensations  of  that  school  seem 
loose  and  thin,  their  most  glittering  points  and  aphorisms 
dull;  nay,  those  who  admire  them  most  justly  will  know 
better  than  to  think  the  two  kinds  of  writing  comparable. 
After  the  completion  of  Isabella  followed  the  Scotch 
tour,  of  which  the  only  poetic  fruits  of  value  were  the 
lines  on  Meg  Merrilies  and  those  on  Fingal's  Cave.  Re- 
turning in  shaken  health  to  the  bedside  of  a  brother  mor- 
tally ill,  Keats  plunged  at  once  into  the  most  arduous 
poetic  labour  he  had  yet  undertaken.  This  was  the  com- 
position of  Hyperion.1  The  subject  had  been  long  in  his 
mind,  and  both  in  the  text  and  the  preface  of  Endymion 
he  indicated  his  intention  to  attempt  it.  At  first  he 
thought  of  the  poem  to  be  written  as  a  "  romance  ;"  but 
under  the  influence  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  no  doubt  also 
considering  the  height  and  vastness  of  the  subject,  his 
plan  changed  to  that  of  a  blank  verse  epic  in  ten  books. 
His  purpose  was  to  sing  the  Titanoraachia,  or  warfare  of 
the  earlier  Titanic  dynasty  with  the  later  Olympian  dy- 
nasty of  the  Greek  gods;  and  in  particular  one  episode 
of  that  warfare,  the  dethronement  of  the  sun-god  Hyperi- 
on and  the  assumption  of  his  kindgom  by  Apollo.  Crit- 
ics, even  intelligent  critics,  sometimes  complain  that  Keats 
should  have  taken  this  and  other  subjects  of  his  art  from 
what  they  call  the  "  dead  "  mythology  of  ancient  Greece. 
As  if  that  mythology  could  ever  die ;  as  if  the  ancient 
fables,  in  passing  out  of  the  transitory  state  of  things  be- 

1  As  to  the  date  when  Hyperion  was  written,  see  Appendix,  p. 
225 ;  and  as  to  the  error  by  which  Keats's  later  recast  of  his  work 
has  been  taken  for  an  earlier  draft,  ibid,,  p.  226. 


vlIj  "HYPERION."  151 

lieved  into  the  state  of  things  remembered  and  cherished 
in  imagination,  had  not  put  on  a  second  life  more  endur- 
ing and  more  fruitful  than  the  first.     Faiths  as  faiths  per- 
ish one  after  another,  but  each  in  passing  away  bequeaths 
for  the  enrichment  of  the  after-world  whatever  elements 
it  has  contained  of  imaginative  or  moral  truth  or  beauty. 
The  polytheism  of  ancient  Greece,  embodying  the  instinct- 
ive effort  of  the  brightliest-gifted  human  race  to  explain 
its  earliest  experiences  of  nature  and  civilization,  of  the 
thousand  moral  and  material  forces,  cruel  or  kindly,  which 
environ  and  control  the  life  of  man,  on  earth,  is  rich  be- 
yond measure  in  such  elements ;  and  if  the  modern  world 
at  any  time  fails  to  value   them,  it  is  the  modern  mind 
which  is  in  so  far  dead,  and  not  they.     One  of  the  great 
symptoms  of  returning  vitality  in  the  imagination  of  Eu- 
rope towards  the  close  of  the  last  century,  was  its  awaken- 
ing to  the  forgotten  charm   of  past  modes  of  faith  and 
life.     When  men,  in  the  earlier  part  of  that  century,  spoke 
of  Greek  antiquity,  it  was  in  stale  and  borrowed  terms 
which  showed  that  they  had  never  felt  its  power;  just  as, 
when  they   spoke   of   nature,  it   was  in  set  phrases  that 
showed  that  they  had  never  looked  at  her     On  matters 
of  daily  social  experience  the  gifts  of  observation  and  of 
reason  were  brilliantly  exercised,  but  all  the  best  thoughts 
of  the  time  were  thoughts  of  the  street,  the  mart,  and  the 
assembly.     The  human  genius  was  for  the  time  being  like 
some  pilgrim  long  detained  within  city  walls,  and  unused 
to  see  or  think  of  anything  beyond  them.     At  length  re- 
suming its   march,  it  emerged  on  open  ground,  where  it 
fell  to  enjoying  with  a  forgotten  zest  the  beauties  of  the 
earth  and  sky,  and  whence,  at  the  same  time,  it  could  turn 
back  to  gaze  on  regions  it  had  long  left  behind,  discerning 
with  new  clearness  and  a  new  emotion  here,  under  cloud 
L 


152  KEATS.  [chap. 

and  rainbow,  the  forests  and  spired  cities  of  the  Middle 
Age,  there,  in  serener  light,  the  hills  and  havens  and  level 
fanes  of  Hellas. 

The  great  leader  and  pioneer  of  the  modern  spirit  on 
this  new  phase  of  its  pilgrimage  was  Goethe,  who  with  de- 
liberate effort  and  self-discipline  climbed  to  heights  com- 
manding an  equal  survey  over  the  mediasval  and  the  classic 
past.  We  had  in  England  had  an  earlier,  shyer,  and  far 
less  effectual  pioneer  in  Gray.  As  time  went  on,  poet 
after  poet  arose  and  sang  more  freely,  one  the  glories  of 
nature,  another  the  enchantments  of  the  Middle  Age,  an- 
other the  Greek  beauty  and  joy  of  life.  Keats,  when  his 
time  came,  showed  himself,  all  young  and  untutored  as  he 
was,  freshly  and  powerfully  inspired  to  sing  of  all  three 
alike.  He  does  not,  as  we  have  said,  write  of  Greek  things 
in  a  Greek  manner.  Something,  indeed,  in  Hyperion — at 
least  in  the  first  two  books — he  has  caught  from  Paradise 
Lost  of  the  high  restraint  and  calm  which  was  common  to 
the  Greeks  and  Milton.  But  to  realise  how  far  he  is  in 
workmanship  from  the  Greek  purity  and  precision  of  out- 
line, and  firm  definition  of  individual  images,  we  have 
only  to  think  of  his  palace  of  Hyperion,  with  its  vague, 
far-dazzling  pomps  and  phantom  terrors  of  coming  doom. 
This  is  the  most  sustained  and  celebrated  passage  of  the 
poem.  Or  let  us  examine  one  of  its  most  characteristic 
images  from  nature : 

"As  when,  upon  a  tranced  summer  night, 
Those  green-robed  senators  of  mighty  woods, 
Tall  oaks,  branch-charmed  by  the  earnest  stars, 
Dream,  and  so  dream  all  night  without  a  stir." 

Not  to  the  simplicity  of  the  Greek,  but  to  the  complexity 
of  the  modern  sentiment  of  nature,  it  belongs  to  try  and 


tii.  J  "HYPERION."  153 

express,  by  such  a  concourse  of  metaphors  and  epithets, 
every  effect  at  once,  to  the  most  fugitive,  which  a  forest 
scene  by  starlight  can  have  upon  the  mind:  the  pre-emi- 
nence of  the  oaks  among  the  other  trees — their  aspect  of 
human  venerableness — their  verdure,  unseen  in  the  dark- 
ness—  the  sense  of  their  preternatural  stillness  and  sus- 
pended life  in  an  atmosphere  that  seems  to  vibrate  with 
mvsterious  influences  communicated  between  earth  and 
sky.1 

Bat  though  Keats  sees  the  Greek  world  from  afar,  he 
sees  it  truly.  The  Greek  touch  is  not  his,  but  in  his  own 
rich  and  decorated  English  way  he  writes  with  a  sure  in- 
sight into  the  vital  meaning  of  Greek  ideas.  For  the  story 
of  the  war  of  Titans  and  Olympians  he  had  nothing  to 
guide  him  except  scraps  from  the  ancient  writers,  princi- 
pally Hesiod,  as  retailed  by  the  compilers  of  classical  dic- 
tionaries; and  from  the  scholar's  point  of  view  his  version, 
we  can  see,  would  at  many  points  have  been  arbitrary,  mix- 
ing up  Latin  conceptions  and  nomenclature  with  Greek, 
and  introducing  much  new  matter  of  his  own  invention. 
But  as  to  the  essential  meaning  of  that  warfare  and  its 
result — the  dethronement  of  an  older  and  ruder  worship 
by  one  more  advanced  and  humane,  in  which  ideas  of 
ethics  and  of  arts  held  a  larger  place  beside  ideas  of  nature 
and  her  brute  powers — as  to  this,  it  could  not  possibly  be 
divined  more  truly,  or  illustrated  with  more  beauty  and 
force,  than  by  Keats  in  the  speech  of  Oceanus  in  the  Sec- 

1  If  we  want  to  see  Greek  themes  treated  in  a  Greek  manner  by 
predecessors  or  contemporaries  of  Keats,  we  can  do  so— though  only 
on  a  cameo  scale — in  the  best  idyls  of  Chenier  in  France,  as  ISAveu- 
gle,  or  Le  Jeune  Malade,  or  of  Landor  in  England,  as  the  Hamadryad, 
or  Enallos  and  Cymodamia;  poems  which  would  hardly  have  been 
written  otherwise  at  Alexandria  in  the  days  of  Theocritus. 


154 


KEATS.  [chap. 


ond  Book.  Again,  in  conceiving  and  animating  these 
colossal  shapes  of  early  gods,  with  their  personalities  be- 
tween the  elemental  and  the  human,  what  masterly  justice 
of  instinct  does  he  show — to  take  one  point  only — in  the 
choice  of  similitudes,  drawn  from  the  vast  inarticulate 
sounds  of  nature,  by  which  he  seeks  to  make  us  realise 
their  voices.  Thus  of  the  assembled  gods  when  Saturn  is 
about  to  speak : 

"  There  is  a  roaring  in  the  bleak-grown  pines 
When  Winter  lifts  his  voice ;  there  is  a  noise 
Among  immortals  when  a  God  gives  sign, 
With  hushing  finger,  how  he  means  to  load 
His  tongue  with  the  full  weight  of  utterless  thought, 
With  thunder,  and  with  music,  and  with  pomp : 
Such  noise  is  like  the  roar  of  bleak-grown  pines." 

Again,  of  Oceanus  answering  his  fallen  chief : 

"  So  ended  Saturn ;  and  the  God  of  the  Sea, 
Sophist  and  sage,  from  no  Athenian  grove, 
But  cogitation  in  his  watery  shades, 
Arose,  with  locks  not  oozy,  and  began 
In  murmurs,  which  his  first-endeavouring  tongue 
Caught  infant-like  from  the  far-foamed  sands." 

And  once   more,  of  Clymene  followed  by  Enceladus  in 

debate : 

"  So  far  her  voice  flow'd  on,  like  timorous  brook 
That,  lingering  along  a  pebbled  coast, 
Doth  fear  to  meet  the  sea ;  but  sea  it  met, 
And  shudder'd ;  for  the  overwhelming  voice 
Of  huge  Enceladus  swallow'd  it  in  wrath ; 
The  ponderous  syllables,  like  sullen  waves 
In  the  half-glutted  hollows  of  reef-rocks, 
Came  booming  thus." 


vil]  "HYPERION."  155 

This  second  book  of  Hyperion,  relating  the  council  of  the 
dethroned  Titans,  has  neither  the  sublimity  of  the  first, 
where  the  solemn  opening  vision  of  Saturn  fallen  is  fol- 
lowed by  the  resplendent  one  of  Hyperion  threatened  in 
his  "  lucent  empire,"  nor  the  intensity  of  the  unfinished 
third,  where  we  leave  Apollo  undergoing  a  convulsive 
change  under  the  afflatus  of  Mnemosyne,  and  about  to  put 
on  the  full  powers  of  his  godhead.  But  it  has  a  rightness 
and  controlled  power  of  its  own  which  places  it,  to  my 
mind,  quite  on  a  level  with  the  other  two. 

With  a  few  slips  and  inequalities,  and  one  or  two  in- 
stances of  verbal  incorrectness,  Hyperion,  as  far  as  it  was 
written,  is  indeed  one  of  the  grandest  poems  in  our  lan- 
guage, and  in  its  grandeur  seems  one  of  the  easiest  and 
most  spontaneous.  Keats,  however,  had  never  been  able 
to  apply  himself  to  it  continuously,  but  only  by  fits  and 
starts.  Partly  this  was  due  to  the  distractions  of  bereave- 
ment, of  material  anxiety,  and  of  dawning  passion  amid 
which  it  was  begun  and  continued  ;  partly  (if  we  may  trust 
the  statement  of  the  publishers)  to  disappointment  at  the 
reception  of  Endymion;  and  partly,  it  is  clear,  to  some- 
thing not  wholly  congenial  to  his  powers  in  the  task  itself. 
When,  after  letting  the  poem  lie  by  through  the  greater 
part  of  the  spring  and  summer  of  1819,  he  in  September 
made  up  his  mind  to  give  it  up,  he  wrote  to  Reynolds  ex- 
plaining his  reasons  as  follows :  "  There  were  too  many 
Miltonic  inversions  in  it — Miltonic  verse  cannot  be  written 
but  in  an  artful,  or  rather  artist's,  humour.  I  wish  to  give 
myself  up  to  other  sensations.  English  ought  to  be  kept 
up."  In  the  same  connection  he  declares  that  Chatterton 
is  the  purest  writer  in  the  English  language.  "  He  has 
no  French  idiom  or  particles,  like  Chaucer;  it  is  genuine 
English  idiom  in   English  words."     In  writing  about  the 


156  KEATS.  [chap. 

same  time  to  his  brother,  he  again  expresses  similar  opin- 
ions both  as  to  Milton  and  Chatterton. 

The  influence,  and  something  of  the  majesty,  of  Para- 
dise Lost  are  in  truth  to  be  found  in  Hyperion ;  and  the 
debate  of  the  fallen  Titans  in  the  second  book  is  obviously 
to  some  extent  modelled  on  the  debate  of  the  fallen  angels. 
But  Miltonic  the  poem  hardly  is  in  any  stricter  sense. 
Passing  by  those  general  differences  that  arise  from  the 
contrast  of  Milton's  age  with  Keats's  youth,  of  his  austeri- 
ty with  Keats's  luxuriance  of  spirit,  and  speaking  of  palpa- 
ble and  technical  differences  only,  in  the  matter  of  rhythm 
Keats's  blank  verse  has  not  the  flight  of  Milton's.  Its 
periods  do  not  wheel  through  such  stately  evolutions  to 
so  solemn  and  far-foreseen  a  close,  though  it  indeed  lacks 
neither  power  nor  music,  and  ranks  unquestionably  with 
the  finest  blank-verse  written  since  Milton — beside  that  of 
Shelley's  Alastor,  perhaps  a  little  below  that  of  Words- 
worth, when  Wordsworth  is  at  his  infrequent  best.  As  to 
diction  and  the  poetic  use  of  words,  Keats  shows  almost  as 
masterly  an  instinct  as  Milton  himself;  but  while  of  Milton's 
diction  the  characteristic  colour  is  derived  from  reading  and 
meditation,  from  an  impassioned  conversance  with  the  con- 
tents of  books,  the  characteristic  colour  of  Keats's  diction  is 
rather  derived  from  conversance  with  nature  and  with  the 
extreme  refinements  of  physical  sensation.  He  is  no  match 
for  Milton  in  a  passage  of  this  kind : 

"  Eden  stretcli'd  her  line 
From  Auran  eastward  to  the  royal  towers 
Of  great  Seleucia,  built  by  Grecian  kings, 
Or  where  the  sons  of  Eden  long  before 
Dwelt  in  Telassar." 

But  then  neither  is  Milton  a  match  for  Keats  in  work  like 
this : 


vii.]  "  HYPERION."  157 

"  Throughout  all  the  isle 
There  was  no  covert,  no  retired  cave 
Unhaunted  by  the  murmurous  noise  of  waves, 
Though  scarcely  heard  in  many  a  green  l'ecess." 

After  the  pomp  and  glow  of  learned  allusion,  the  second 
chief  technical  note  of  Milton's  style  is  his  partiality  for  a 
Latin  use  of  the  relative  pronoun  and  the  double  negative, 
and  for  scholarly  Latin  turn  and  constructions  generally. 
Already  in  Isabella  Keats  is  to  be  found  attempting  both 
notes,  thus : 

"  With  duller  steel  than  the  Persean  sword 
They  cut  away  no  formless  monster's  head." 

Similar  Miltonic  echoes  occur  in  Hyperion,  as  in  the  intro- 
duction already  quoted  to  the  speech  of  Oceanus ;  or  again 

thus : 

"  Then,  as  was  wont,  his  palace-door  flew  ope 
In  smoothest  silence,  save  what  solemn  tubes, 
Blown  by  the  serious  Zephyrs,  gave  of  sweet 
And  wandering  sounds,  slow-breathed  melodies." 

But  they  are  not  frequent,  nor  had  Keats  adopted  as  much 
of  Milton's  technical  manner  as  he  seems  to  have  supposed  ; 
yet  he  had  adopted  more  of  it  than  was  natural  to  him  or 
than  he  cared  to  maintain. 

In  turning  away  from  Milton  to  Chatterton,  he  was  go- 
ing back  to  one  of  his  first  loves  in  literature.  What  he 
says  of  Chatterton's  words  and  idioms  seems  paradoxical 
enough,  as  applied  to  the  archaic  jargon  concocted  by  the 
Bristol  boy  out  of  Kersey's  Dictionary}  But  it  is  true 
that  through  that  jargon  can  be  discerned,  in  the  Rowley 

1  We  are  not  surprised  to  hear  of  Keats,  with  his  instinct  for  the 
best,  that  what  he  most  liked  in  Chatterton's  work  was  the  minstrel's 
song  in  JElla,  that  fantasia,  so  to  speak,  executed  really  with  genius 
on  the  theme  of  one  of  Ophelia's  songs  in  Hamlet. 


158  KEATS.  [chap. 

poems,  not  only  an  ardent  feeling  for  romance  and  an  ex- 
traordinary facility  in  composition,  but  a  remarkable  gift 
of  plain  and  flowing  construction.  And  after  Keats  had 
for  some  time  moved,  not  perfectly  at  his  ease,  though 
with  results  to  us  so  masterly,  in  the  paths  of  Milton,  we 
find  him  in  fact  tempted  aside  on  an  excursion  into  the 
regions  beloved  by  Chatterton.  We  know  not  how  much 
of  Hyperion  had  been  written  when  he  laid  it  aside  in  Jan- 
uary to  take  up  the  composition  of  St.  Agnes' s  Eve,  that 
unsurpassed  example — nay,  must  we  not  rather  call  it  un- 
equalled?— of  the  pure  charm  of  coloured  and  romantic 
narrative  in  English  verse.  As  this  poem  does  not  attempt 
the  elemental  grandeur  of  Hyperion,  so  neither  does  it  ap- 
proach the  human  pathos  and  passion  of  Isabella.  Its 
personages  appeal  to  us,  not  so  much  humanly  and  in 
themselves  as  by  the  circumstances,  scenery,  and  atmos- 
phere amidst  which  we  see  them  move.  Herein  lies  the 
strength,  and  also  the  weakness,  of  modern  romance — its 
strength,  inasmuch  as  the  charm  of  the  mediaeval  colour 
and  mystery  is  unfailing  for  those  who  feel  it  at  all ;  its 
weakness,  inasmuch  as  under  the  influence  of  that  charm 
both  writer  and  reader  are  too  apt  to  forget  the  need  for 
human  and  moral  truth;  and  without  these  no  great  liter- 
ature can  exist. 

Keats  takes  in  this  poem  the  simple,  almost  threadbare 
theme  of  the  love  of  an  adventurous  youth  for  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  hostile  house — a  story  wherein  something  of  Ro- 
meo and  Juliet  is  mixed  with  something  of  young  Loch- 
invar —  and  brings  it  deftly  into  association  with  the  old 
popular  belief  as  to  the  way  a  maiden  might  on  this  anni- 
versary win  sight  of  her  lover  in  a  dream.  Choosing  hap- 
pily for  such  a  purpose  the  Spenserian  stanza,  he  adds  to 
the  melodious  grace,  the  "sweet-slipping  movement,"  as  it 


til]  "THE  EVE  OF  ST.  AGNES."  159 

has  been  called,  of  Spenser,  a  transparent  ease  and  direct- 
ness of  construction ;  and  with  this  ease  and  directness 
combines  (wherein  lies  the  great  secret  of  his  ripened  art) 
a  never-failing  richness  and  concentration  of  poetic  mean- 
ino-  and  suggestion.  From  the  opening  stanza,  which 
makes  us  feel  the  chill  of  the  season  to  our  bones — telling 
us  first  of  its  effect  on  the  wild  and  tame  creatures  of  wood 
and  field,  and  next  how  the  frozen  breath  of  the  old  beads- 
man in  the  chapel  aisle  "  scem'd  taking  flight  for  heaven, 
without  a  death  " — from  thence  to  the  close,  where  the 
lovers  make  their  way  past  the  sleeping  porter  and  the 
friendly  bloodhound  into  the  night,  the  poetry  seems  to 
throb  in  every  line  with  the  life  of  imagination  and  beauty. 
It  indeed  plays  in  great  part  about  the  external  circum- 
stances and  decorative  adjuncts  of  the  tale.  But  in  hand- 
ling these  Keats's  method  is  the  reverse  of  that  by  which 
some  writers  vainly  endeavour  to  rival  in  literature  the  ef- 
fects of  the  painter  and  sculptor.  He  never  writes  for  the 
eye  merely,  but  vivifies  everything  he  touches,  telling  even 
of  dead  and  senseless  things  in  terms  of  life,  movement, 
and  feeling.  Thus  the  monuments  in  the  chapel  aisle  are 
brought  before  us,  not  by  any  effort  of  description,  but 
solely  through  our  sympathy  with  the  shivering  fancy  of 
the  beadsman  : 

"  Knights,  ladies,  praying  in  dumb  orat'ries, 
He  passetb  by ;  and  his  weak  spirit  fails 
To  think  how  they  may  ache  in  icy  hoods  and  mails." 

Even  into  the  sculptured  heads  of  the  corbels  in  the  ban- 
queting hall  the  poet  strikes  life : 

"  The  carved  angels,  ever  eager-eyed, 
Stared,  where  upon  their  heads  the  cornice  rests, 
With  wings  blown  back,  and  hands  put  cross -wise  on  their 
breasts." 
8 


160  KEATS.  [chap. 

The  painted  panes  in  the  chamber  window,  instead  of  try- 
ing to  pick  out  their  beauties  in  detail,  he  calls 

"  Innumerable  of  stains  and  splendid  dyes 
As  are  the  tiger-moth's  deep-damask'd  wings  " 

— a  gorgeous  phrase  which  leaves  the  widest  range  to  the 
colour -imagination  of  the  reader,  giving  it  at  the  same 
time  a  sufficient  clue  by  the  simile  drawn  from  a  particu- 
lar specimen  of  nature's  blazonry.  In  the  last  line  of  the 
same  stanza — 

"A  shielded  scutcheon  blush'd  with  blood  of  queens  and  kings  " 

— the  word  "  blush  "  makes  the  colour  seem  to  come  and 
go,  while  the  mind  is  at  the  same  time  sent  travelling  from 
the  maiden's  chamber  on  thoughts  of  her  lineage  and  an- 
cestral fame.  Observation,  I  believe,  shows  that  moon- 
light has  not  the  power  to  transmit  the  hues  of  painted 
glass  as  Keats  in  this  celebrated  passage  represents  it.  Let 
us  be  grateful  for  the  error,  if  error  it  is,  which  has  led 
him  to  heighten,  by  these  saintly  splendours  of  colour,  the 
sentiment  of  a  scene  wherein  a  voluptuous  glow  is  so  ex- 
quisitely attempered  with  chivalrous  chastity  and  awe. 
When  Madeline  unclasps  her  jewels,  a  weaker  poet  would 
have  dwelt  on  their  lustre  or  other  visible  qualities;  Keats 
puts  those  aside,  and  speaks  straight  to  our  spirits  in  an 
epithet  breathing  with  the  very  life  of  the  wearer — "  her 
warmed  jewels."  When  Lorenzo  spreads  the  feast  of  dain- 
ties beside  his  sleeping  mistress,  we  are  made  to  feel  how 
those  ideal  and  rare  sweets  of  ssnse  surround  and  minister 
to  her,  not  only  with  their  own  natural  richness,  but  with 
the  associations  and  the  homage  of  all  far  countries  whence 
they  have  been  gathered — 

"  From  silken  Samarcand  to  cedar'd  Lebanon." 


til]  "THE  EVE  OF  ST.  AGNES."  161 

If  the  unique  charm  of  the  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  lies  thus 
in  the  richness  and  vitality  of  the  accessory  and  decorative 
images,  the  actions  and  emotions  of  the  personages  are 
hardly  less  happily  conceived,  as  far  as  they  go.  What 
can  be  better  touched  than  the  figures  of  the  beadsman 
and  the  nurse,  who  live  just  long  enough  to  share  in  the 
wonders  of  the  night,  and  die  quietly  of  age  when  their 
parts  are  over:1  especially  the  debate  of  old  Angela  with 
Lorenzo,  and  her  gentle  treatment  by  her  mistress  on  the 
stair?  Madeline  is  exquisite  throughout,  but  most  of  all, 
I  think,  at  two  moments:  first  when  she  has  just  entered 
her  chamber — 

"  No  uttered  syllable,  or,  woe  betide : 
But  to  her  heart,  her  heart  was  voluble, 
Paining  with  eloquence  her  balmy  side  " — 

and  afterwards  when,  awakening,  she  finds  her  lover  beside 
her,  and  contrasts  his  bodily  presence  with  her  dream — 

"  '  Ah  Porphyro !'  said  she, '  but  even  now 
Thy  voice  was  at  sweet  tremble  in  mine  ear 
Made  tunable  with  every  sweetest  vow ; 
And  those  sad  eyes  were  spiritual  and  clear. 
How  changed  thou  art !   how  pallid,  chill,  and  drear.'  " 

Criticism  may  urge,  indeed,  that  in  the  "  growing  faint " 
of  Porphyro,  and  in  his  "  warm  unnerved  arm,"  we  have 

1  A  critic,  not  often  so  in  error,  has  contended  that  the  deaths  of 


the  beadsman  and  Angela  in  the  concluding  stanza  are  due  to  the 
exigencies  of  rhyme.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  foreseen  from  the 
first :  that  of  the  beadsman  in  the  lines, 

"But  no — already  had  his  death-bell  rung; 
The  joys  of  all  his  life  were  said  and  sung ;" 
that  of  Angela  where  she  calls  herself 

"A  poor,  weak, palsy-stricken  church-yard  thing, 
"Whose  passing  bell  may  ere  the  midnight  toll." 


162  KEATS.  [chap. 

a  touch  of  that  swooning  abandonment  to  which  Keats's 
heroes  are  too  subject,  But  it  is  the  slightest  possible ; 
and  after  all  the  trait  belongs  not  more  to  the  poet  indi- 
vidually than  to  his  time.  Lovers  in  prose  romances  of 
that  date  are  constantly  overcome  in  like  manner.  And 
we  may  well  pardon  Porphyro  his  weakness,  in  considera- 
tion of  the  spirit  which  has  led  him  to  his  lady's  side  in 
defiance  of  her  "  whole  bloodthirsty  race,"  and  will  bear 
her  safely,  this  night  of  happy  marvels  over,  to  the  home 
"beyond  the  southern  moors"  that  he  has  prepared  for 
her.1 

Nearly  allied  with  the  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  is  the  fragment 
in  the  four-foot  ballad  metre  which  Keats  composed  on 
the  parallel  popular  belief  connected  with  the  eve  of  St. 
Mark.  This  piece  was  planned,  as  we  saw,  at  Chichester, 
and  written,  it  appears,  partly  there  and  partly  at  Win- 
chester six  months  later:  the  name  of  the  heroine,  Bertha, 
seems  farther  to  suggest  associations  with  Canterbury.  Im- 
pressions of  all  these  three  cathedral  cities  which  Keats 
knew  are  combined,  no  doubt,  in  the  picture  of  which  the 
frao-ment  consists.  I  have  said  picture,  but  there  are  two  : 
one  the  out-door  picture  of  the  city  streets  in  their  spring 
freshness  and  Sabbath  peace  ;  the  other  the  in-door  picture 
of  the  maiden  reading  in  her  quaint  fire-lit  chamber.  Each 
in  its  way  is  of  an  admirable  vividness  and  charm.  The 
belief  about  St.  Mark's  Eve  was  that  a  person  stationed 
near  a  church  porch  at  twilight  on  that  anniversary  would 
see  entering  the  church  the  apparitions  of  those  about  to 
die,  or  be  brought  near  death,  in  the  ensuing  year.  Keats's 
fragment  breaks  off  before  the  story  is  well  engaged,  and 
it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  his  opening  would  have  led  up  to 
incidents  illustrating  this  belief.  Neither  is  it  clear  wheth- 
1  Sec  Appendix,  p.  225. 


vii.]  "  THE  EVE  OF  ST.  MARK."  163 

er  he  intended  to  place  them  in  mediaeval  or  in  relatively 
modern  times.  The  demure  Protestant  air  which  he  gives 
the  Sunday  streets,  the  Oriental  furniture  and  curiosities 
of  the  lady's  chamber,  might  seem  to  indicate  the  latter; 
but  we  must  remember  that  he  was  never  strict  in  his 
archaeology  —  witness,  for  instance,  the  line  which  tells 
how  "the  long  carpets  rose  along  the  gusty  floor"  in  the 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes.  The  interest  of  the  St.  Mark's  frag- 
ment, then,  lies  not  in  moving  narrative  or  the  promise 
of  it,  but  in  two  things  :  first,  its  pictorial  brilliance  and 
charm  of  workmanship ;  and  second,  its  relation  to,  and 
influence  on,  later  English  poetry.  Keats  in  this  piece 
anticipates  in  a  remarkable  degree  the  feeling  and  method 
of  the  modern  pre-Raphaelite  schools.  The  in-door  scene 
of  the  girl  over  her  book,  in  its  insistent  delight  in  vivid 
colour  and  the  minuteness  of  far- sought  suggestive  and 
picturesque  detail,  is  perfectly  in  the  spirit  of  Rossetti 
(whom  we  know  that  the  fragment  deeply  impressed  and 
interested) — of  his  pictures  even  more  than  of  his  poems ; 
while  in  the  out-door  work  we  seem  to  find  forestalled  the 
very  tones  and  cadences  of  Mr.  Morris  in  some  tale  of  the 
Earthly  Paradise  : 

"  The  city  streets  were  clean  and  fair 
From  wholesome  drench  of  April  rains  ; 
And  on  the  western  window  panes 
The  chilly  sunset  faintly  told 
Of  unmatured  green  valleys  cold, 
Of  the  green  thorny  bloomless  hedge,     ♦ 
Of  rivers  new  with  springtide  sedge." 

Another  poem  of  the  same  period,  romantic  in  a  differ- 
ent sense,  is  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci.  The  title  is  taken 
from  that  of  a  poem  by  Alain  Chartier — the  secretary  and 
court  poet  of  Charles  VI.  and  Charles  VII.  of  France — of 


164  KEATS.  [chap. 

which  an  English  translation  used  to  be  attributed  to  Chau- 
cer, and  is  included  in  the  early  editions  of  his  works.  This 
title  had  caught  Keats's  fancy,  and  in  the  Eve  of  St.  Agnes 
he  makes  Lorenzo  waken  Madeline  by  playing  beside  her 

bed 

"  an  ancient  ditty,  long  since  mute, 
In  Provence  call'd  'La  belle  dame  sans  merci.' " 

The  syllables  continuing  to  haunt  him,  lie  wrote  in  the 
course  of  the  spring  or  summer  (1819)  a  poem  of  his  own 
on  the  theme,  which  has  no  more  to  do  with  that  of  Char- 
tier  than  Chartier  has  really  to  do  with  Provence.3  Keats's 
ballad  can  hardly  be  said  to  tell  a  story,  but  rather  sets 
before  us,  with  imagery  drawn  from  the  mediaeval  world 
of  enchantment  and  knight-errantry,  a  type  of  the  wasting 
power  of  love,  when  either  adverse  fate  or  deluded  choice 
makes  of  love  not  a  blessing  but  a  bane.  The  plight  which 
the  poet  thus  shadows  forth  is  partly  that  of  his  own  soul 
in  thraldom.  Every  reader  must  feel  how  truly  the  ima- 
gery expresses  the  passion  ;  how  powerfully,  through  these 
fascinating  old-world  symbols,  the  universal  heart  of  man 
is  made  to  speak.  To  many  students  (of  whom  the  pres- 
ent writer  is  one.)  the  union  of  infinite  tenderness  with  a 
weird  intensity,  the  conciseness  and  purity  of  the  poetic 
form,  the  wild  yet  simple  magic  of  the  cadences,  the  per- 
fect "  inevitable  "  union  of  sound  and  sense,  make  of  La 
Belle  Dame  sans  Merci  the  master-piece,  not  only  among 
the  shorter  poems  of  Keats,  but  even  (if  any  single  mas- 
ter-piece must  be  chosen)  among  them  all. 

1  Chartier  was  born  at  Bayeux.  His  Belle  Dcone  sans  Herd  is  a 
poem  of  over  eighty  stanzas,  the  introduction  in  narrative  and  the  rest 
in  dialogue,  setting  forth  the  obduracy  shown  by  a  lady  to  her  wooer, 
and  his  consequent  despair  and  death.  (For  the  date  of  composition 
of  Keats's  poem,  see  Appendix,  p.  226.) 


TIL] 


1  LAMIA."  165 


Before  finally  giving  up  Hyperion,  Keats  had  conceived 
and  written,  during  his  summer  months  at  Shanklin  and 
Winchester,  another  narrative  poem  on  a  Greek  subject, 
but  one  of  those  where  Greek  life  and  legend  come  nearest 
to  the  mediaeval,  and  give  scope  both  for  scenes  of  wonder 
and  witchcraft,  and  for  the  stress  and  vehemence  of  pas- 
sion. I  speak,  of  course,  of  Lamia,  the  story  of  the  ser- 
pent-lady, both  enchantress  and  victim  of  enchantments, 
who  loves  a  youth  of  Corinth,  and  builds  for  him  by  her 
art  a  palace  of  delights,  until  their  happiness  is  shattered 
by  the  scrutiny  of  intrusive  and  cold-blooded  wisdom. 
Keats  had  found  the  germ  of  the  story,  quoted  from  Phi- 
lostratus,  in  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy.  In  versi- 
fying it  he  went  back  once  more  to  rhymed  heroics,  han- 
dling them,  however,  not  as  in  Endymion,  but  in  a  manner 
founded  on  that  of  Dryden,  with  a  free  use  of  the  Alexan- 
drine, a  more  sparing  one  of  the  overflow  and  the  irregular 
pause,  and  of  disyllabic  rhymes  none  at  all.  In  the  meas- 
ure as  thus  treated  by  Keats  there  is  a  fire  and  grace  of 
movement,  a  lithe  and  serpentine  energy,  well  suited  to  the 
theme,  and  as  effective  in  its  way  as  the  victorious  march 
of  Dryden  himself.  Here  is  an  example  where  the  poetry 
of  Greek  mythology  is  finely  woven  into  the  rhetoric  of 

"  Leave  thee  alone  !     Look  back  !     Ah,  goddess,  see 
Whether  my  eyes  can  ever  turn  from  thee ! 
For  pity  do  not  this  sad  heart  belie — 
Even  as  thou  vanishest  so  I  shall  die. 
Stay  !  though  a  Naiad  of  the  rivers,  stay  ! 
To  thy  far  wishes  will  thy  streams  obey ; 
Stay !  though  the  greenest  woods  be  thy  domain, 
Alone  they  can  drink  up  the  morning  rain ; 
Though  a  descended  Pleiad,  will  not  one 
Of  thine  harmonious  sisters  keep  in  tune 
Thy  spheres,  and  as  thy  silver  proxy  shine?" 


166  KEATS.  [chap. 

And  here  an  instance  of  the  power  and  reality  of  scenic 
imagination : 

"Ay  men  talk  in  a  dream,  so  Corinth  all, 
Throughout  her  palaces  imperial, 
And  all  her  populous  streets  and  temples  lewd, 
Mutter'd,  like  tempest  in  the  distance  brew'd, 
To  the  wide-spreaded  night  above  her  towers. 
Men,  women,  rich  and  poor,  in  the  cool  hours, 
Shuffled  their  sandals  o'er  the  pavement  white, 
Companion'd  or  alone;  while  many  a  light 
Flar'd,  here  and  there,  from  wealthy  festivals, 
And  threw  their  moving  shadows  on  the  walls, 
Or  found  them  cluster'd  in  the  cornic'd  shade 
Of  some  arch'd  temple  door,  or  dusty  colonnade." 

No  one  can  deny  the  truth  of  Kcats's  own  criticism  on 
Lamia  when  he  says,  "  I  am  certain  there  is  that  sort  of 
fire  in  it  which  must  take  hold  of  people  in  some  way — 
give  them  either  pleasant  or  unpleasant  sensation."  There 
is,  perhaps,  nothing  in  all  his  writing  so  vivid,  or  that  so 
burns  itself  in  upon  the  mind,  as  the  picture  of  the  serpent- 
woman  awaiting  the  touch  of  Hermes  to  transform  her, 
followed  by  the  agonized  process  of  the  transformation  it- 
self. Admirably  told,  though  perhaps  somewhat  dispro- 
portionately for  its  place  in  the  poem,  is  the  introductory 
episode  of  Hermes  and  his  nymph  ;  admirably  again  the 
concluding  scene,  where  the  merciless  gaze  of  the  philoso- 
pher exorcises  his  pupil's  dream  of  love  and  beauty,  and 
the  lover  in  forfeiting  his  illusion  forfeits  life.  This  thrill- 
ing vividness  of  narration  in  particular  points,  and  the 
fine  melodious  vigour  of  much  of  the  verse,  have  caused 
some  students  to  give  Lamia  almost  the  first,  if  not  the 
first,  place  among  Keats's  narrative  poems.  But  surely 
for  this  it  is  in  some  parts  too  feverish  and  in  others  too 


vil]  "LAMIA."  167 

unequal.  It  contains  descriptions  not  entirely  successful, 
as,  for  instance,  that  of  the  palace  reared  by  Lamia's  magic, 
which  will  not  bear  comparison  with  other  and  earlier 
dream-palaces  of  the  poet's  building*.  And  it  has  reflective 
passages,  as  that  in  the  first  book  beginning,  "  Let  the 
mad  poets  say  whate'er  they  please,"  and  the  first  fifteen 
lines  of  the  second,  where,  from  the  winning  and  truly 
poetic  ease  of  his  style  at  its  best,  Keats  relapses  into  some- 
thing too  like  Leigh  Hunt's  and  his  own  early  strain  of 
affected  ease  and  fireside  triviality.  He  shows,  at  the 
same  time,  signs  of  a  return  to  his  former  rash  experi- 
ments in  language.  The  positive  virtues  of  beauty  and  fe- 
licity in  his  diction  had  never  been  attended  by  the  nega- 
tive virtue  of  strict  correctness.  Thus,  in  the  Eve  of  St. 
Agnes  we  had  to  "  brook  "  tears  for  to  check  or  forbear 
them  ;  in  Hyperion,  "  portion' d  "  for  "  proportion'd,"  eyes 
that  "  fever  out,"  a  chariot  "  foam'd  along."  Some  of  these 
verbal  licences  possess  a  force  that  makes  them  pass,  but 
not  so  in  Lamia  the  adjectives  "  psalterfan  "  and  "  piaz- 
zian,"  the  verb  "to  labyrinth,"  and  the  participle  "daft," 
as  if  from  an  imaginary  active  verb  meaning  to  daze. 

In  the  moral  which  the  tale  is  made  to  illustrate  there  is, 
moreover,  a  weakness.  Keats  himself  gives  us  fair  warn- 
ing against  attaching  too  much  importance  to  any  opinion 
which  in  a  momentary  mood  we  may  find  him  uttering. 
But  the  doctrine  he  sets  forth  in  Lamia  is  one  which,  from 
the  reports  of  his  conversation,  we  know  him  to  have  held 
with  a  certain  consistency: 

"  Do  not  all  charms  fly 

At  the  mere  touch  of  cold  philosophy  ? 

There  was  an  awful  rainbow  once  in  heaven ; 

We  know  her  woof,  her  texture ;  she  is  given 

In  the  dull  catalogue  of  common  things. 

Philosophy  will  clip  an  angel's  wings, 
8*      M 


168  KEATS.  [chap. 

Conquer  all  mysteries  by  rule  and  line, 
Empty  the  haunted  air  and  gnorned  mine — 
Unweave  a  rainbow,  as  it  erewliile  made 
The  tender-persoifd  Lamia  melt  into  a  shade." 

Campbell  has  set  forth  the  same  doctrine  more  fully  in 
The  Rainbow;  but  one  sounder,  braver,  and  of  better  hope, 
by  which  Keats  would  have  done  well  to  stand,  is  preached 
by  Wordsworth  in  his  famous  Preface. 

Passing  now  from  the  narrative  to  the  reflective  portion 
of  Keats's  work  during  this  period — it  was  on  the  odes, 
we  saw,  that  he  was  chiefly  occupied  in  the  spring  months 
of  1819,  from  the  completion  of  St.  Agnes  s  Eve  at  Chi- 
chester in  January  until  the  commencement  of  Lamia  and 
Otho  the  Great  at  Shanklin  in  June.  These  odes  of  Keats 
constitute  a  class  apart  in  English  literature,  in  form  and 
manner  neither  lineally  derived  from  any  earlier,  nor  much 
resembling  any  contemporary,  verse.  In  what  he  calls  the 
"  roundelay  "  of  the  Indian  maiden  in  Endymion  he  had 
made  his  most  elaborate  lyrical  attempt  until  now ;  and 
while  for  once  approaching  Shelley  in  lyric  ardour  and 
height  of  pitch,  had  equalled  Coleridge  in  touches  of  wild 
musical  beauty  and  far-sought  romance.  His  new  odes  are 
comparatively  simple  and  regular  in  form.  They  are  writ- 
ten in  a  strain  intense,  indeed,  but  meditative  and  brooding, 
and  quite  free  from  the  declamatory  and  rhetorical  elements 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  the  idea  of  an 
ode.  Of  the  five  composed  in  the  spring  of  1819,  two, 
those  on  Psyche  and  the  Grecian  Urn,  are  inspired  by  the 
old  Greek  world  of  imagination  and  art;  two,  those  on 
Melancholy  and  the  Nightingale,  by  moods  of  the  poet's 
own  mind ;  while  the  fifth,  that  on  Indolence,  partakes  in 
a  weaker  degree  of  both  inspirations. 

In  the  Psyche  (where  the  stanza  is  of  a  lengthened  type 


vn.]  THE  ODES.  169 

approaching  those  of  Spenser's  nuptial  odes,  but  not  reg- 
ularly repeated)  Keats  recurs  to  a  theme  of  which  he 
had  long  been  enamoured,  as  we  know  by  the  lines  in  the 
opening  poem  of  his  first  book,  beginning, 

"  So  felt  he,  who  first  told  how  Psyche  went 
On  the  smooth  wind  to  realms  of  wonderment." 

Following  these  lines,  in  his  early  piece,  came  others  dis- 
figured by  cloying  touches  of  the  kind  too  common  in 
his  love-scenes.  Nor  are  like  touches  quite  absent  from 
the  ode;  but  they  are  more  than  compensated  by  the 
exquisite  freshness  of  the  natural  scenery  where  the  myth- 
ic lovers  are  disclosed — "  Mid  hush'd,  cool-rooted  flowers 
fragrant-eyed."  What  other  poet  has  compressed  into  a 
sino-le  line  so  much  of  the  true  life  and  charm  of  flowers, 
of  their  power  to  minister  to  the  spirit  of  man  through 
all  his  senses  at  once  ?  Such  felicity  in  compound  epithets 
is  by  this  time  habitual  with  Keats ;  and  of  Spenser,  with 
his  "  sea-shouldering  whales,"  he  is  now  in  his  own  manner 
the  equal.  The  "  azure-lidded  sleep  "  of  the  maiden  in  St. 
Agnes' s  Eve  is  matched  in  this  ode  by  the  "  moss  -  lain 
Dryads  "a-nd  the  "  soft-  conched  ear"  of  Psyche,  though 
the  last  epithet  perhaps  jars  on  us  a  little  with  a  sense  of 
oddity,  like  the  "cirque-couchant"  snake  in  Lamia.  For 
the  rest  there  is  certainly  something  strained  in  the  turn 
of  thought  and  expression  whereby  the  poet  offers  him- 
self and  the  homage  of  his  own  mind  to  the  divinity  he 
addresses  in  lieu  of  the  worship  of  antiquity  for  which 
she  came  too  late ;  and  especially  in  the  terms  of  the 
metaphor  which  opens  the  famous  fourth  stanza : 

"  Yes,  I  will  be  thy  priest  and  build  a  fane 
In  some  untrodden  region  of  my  mind, 
Where  branched  thoughts,  new-blown  with  pleasant  pain, 
Instead  of  pines  shall  murmur  in  the  wind." 


170  KEATS.  [ciiap. 

Yet  over  such  difficulties  the  true  lover  of  poetry  will  find 
himself  swiftly  borne,  until  he  pauses  breathless  and  de- 
lighted at  the  threshold  of  the  sanctuary  prepared  by  the 
"gardener  Fancy,"  his  ear  charmed  by  the  glow  and  music 
of  the  verse,  with  its  hurrying  pace  and  artfully  iterated 
vowels  towards  the  close,  his  mind  enthralled  by  the  beauty 
of  the  invocation  and  the  imagery. 

Less  glowing,  but  of  finer  conception  and  more  rare 
poetic  value,  is  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn.  Instead  of 
the  long  and  unequal  stanza  of  the  Psyche,  it  is  written 
in  a  regular  stanza  of  five  rhymes,  the  first  two  arranged 
in  a  quatrain,  and  the  second  three  in  a  sestet :  a  plan  to 
which  Keats  adhered  in  the  rest  of  his  odes,  only  varying 
the  order  of  the  sestet,  and  in  one  instance — the  ode  to 
Melancholy — expanding  it  into  a  septet.  The  sight,  or 
the  imagination,  of  a  piece  of  ancient  sculpture  had  set 
the  poet's  mind  at  work,  on  the  one  hand  conjuring  up 
the  scenes  of  ancient  life  and  worship  which  lay  behind 
and  suggested  the  sculptured  images ;  on  the  other,  spec- 
ulating on  the  abstract  relations  of  plastic  art  to  life. 
The  opening  invocation  is  followed  by  a  string  of  ques- 
tions which  flash  their  own  answer  upon  us  out  of  the 
darkness  of  antiquity — interrogatories  which  are  at  the 
same  time  pictures  —  "What  men  or  gods  are  these, 
what  maidens  loth,"  etc.  The  second  and  third  stan- 
zas express  with  perfect  poetic  felicity  and  insight  the 
vital  differences  between  life,  which  pays  for  its  unique 
prerogative  of  reality  by  satiety  and  decay,  and  art, 
which  in  forfeiting  reality  gains  in  exchange  perma- 
nence of  beauty,  and  the  power  to  charm  by  imagined 
experiences  even  richer  than  the  real.  Then  the  ques- 
tioning begins  again,  and  yields  the  incomparable  choice 
of  pictures — 


vii'.]  THE  ODES.  171 

"  What  little  town  by  river  or  sea  shore, 

Or  mountain  built  with  peaceful  citadel, 
Is  emptied  of  its  folk,  this  quite  morn  ?" 

In  the  answering  lines — 

"  And,  little  town,  thy  streets  for  evermore 
Will  silent  be ;  and  not  a  soul  to  tell 
Why  thou  art  desolate,  can  e'er  return  " — 

in  these  lines  there  seems  a  dissonance,  inasmuch  as  they 
speak  of  the  arrest  of  life  as  though  it  were  an  infliction 
in  the  sphere  of  reality,  and  not  merely,  like  the  instances 
of  such  arrest  given  farther  back,  a  necessary  condition 
in  the  sphere  of  art,  having  in  that  sphere  its  own  com- 
pensations. But  it  is  a  dissonance  which  the  attentive 
reader  can  easily  reconcile  for  himself ;  and  none  but  an 
attentive  reader  will  notice  it.  Finally,  dropping  the  airy 
play  of  the  mind  backward  and  forward  between  the  two 
spheres,  the  poet  consigns  the  work  of  ancient  skill  to  the 

future,  to  remain, 

"  in  midst  of  other  woe 
Than  ours,  a  friend  to  man,  to  whom  thou  say'st, 
Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty  ;" 

thus  proclaiming  in  the  last  words  what,  amidst  the  grop- 
ings  of  reason  and  the  flux  of  things,  is  to  the  poet  and 
artist — at  least  to  one  of  Keats's  temper — an  immutable 
law. 

It  seems  clear  that  no  single  extant  work  of  antiquity 
can  have  supplied  Keats  with  the  suggestion  for  this 
poem.  There  exists,  indeed,  at  Holland  House  an  urn 
wrought  with  just  such  a  scene  of  pastoral  sacrifice  as  is 
described  in  his  fourth  stanza  :*  and  of  course  no  subject 

1  This  has  been  pointed  out  by  my  colleague,  Mr.  A.  S.  Murray 
(see  Forman,  Works,  vol.  iii.,  p.  115,  note;  and  W.  T.  Arnold,  Poetical 
Works,  etc.,  p.  xxii.,  note). 


172  KEATS.  [chap. 

is  commoner  in  Greek  relief-sculpture  than  a  Bacchana- 
lian procession.  But  the  two  subjects  do  not,  so  far  as  I 
know,  occur  together  on  any  single  work  of  ancient  art ; 
and  Keats  probably  imagined  his  urn  by  a  combination 
of  sculptures  actually  seen  in  the  British  Museum,  with 
others  known  to  him  only  from  engravings,  and  particu- 
larly from  Piranesi's  etchings.  Lord  Holland's  urn  is  duly 
figured  in  the  Vast  e  Candelabri  of  that  admirable  mas- 
ter. From  the  old  Leigh  Hunt  days  Keats  had  been  fond 
of  what  he  calls 

"  the  pleasant  flow 
Of  words  at  opening  a  portfolio  ;" 

and  in  the  scene  of  sacrifice  in  Endymion  (Book  I.,  136- 
163)  we  may  perhaps  already  find  a  proof  of  familiarity 
with  this  particular  print,  as  well  as  an  anticipation  of  the 
more  masterly  poetic  rendering  of  the  subject  in  the  ode. 

The  ode  On  Indolence  stands  midway,  not  necessarily 
in  date  of  composition,  but  in  scope  and  feeling,  between 
the  two  Greek  and  the  two  personal  odes,  as  I  have  above 
distinguished  them.  In  it  Keats  again  calls  up  the  image 
of  a  marble  urn,  but  not  for  its  own  sake,  only  to  illustrate 
the  guise  in  which  he  feigns  the  allegoric  presences  of 
Love,  Ambition,  and  Poetry  to  have  appeared  to  him  in 
a  day-dream.  This  ode,  less  highly  wrought  and  more 
unequal  than  the  rest,  contains  the  imaginative  record  of 
a  passing  mood  (mentioned  also  in  his  correspondence) 
when  the  wonted  intensity  of  his  emotional  life  was  sus- 
pended under  the  spell  of  an  agreeable  physical  languor. 
Well  had  it  been  for  him  had  such  moods  come  more  fre- 
quently to  give  him  rest.  Most  sensitive  among  the  sons 
of  men,  the  sources  of  joy  and  pain  lay  close  together  in 
his  nature,  and  unsatisfied  passion  kept  both  sources  filled 


til]  THE  ODES.  173 

to  bursting.  One  of  the  attributes  be  assigns  to  bis  en- 
chan tress  Lamia  is  a 

"  sciential  brain 
To  unperplex  bliss  from  its  neighbour  pain." 

In  the  fragmentary  ode  On  Melancholy  (wbicb  has  no 
proper  beginning,  its  first  stanza  having  been  discarded)  he 
treats  the  theme  of  Beaumont  and  of  Milton  in  a  manner 
entirely  his  own,  expressing  his  experience  of  the  habitual 
interchange  and  alternation  of  emotions  of  joy  and  pain 
with  a  characteristic  easy  magnificence  of  imagery  and 
style  : 

"Aye,  in  the  very  Temple  of  Delight 

Veil'd  Melancholy  has  her  sovereign  shrine, 

Though  known  to  none  save  him  whose  strenuous  tongue 
Can  burst  joy's  grape  against  his  palate  fine : 
His  soul  shall  taste  the  sadness  of  her  might, 
And  be  among  her  cloudy  trophies  hung." 

The  same  crossing  and  intermingling  of  opposite  cur- 
rents of  feeling  finds  expression,  together  with  unequalled 
touches  of  the  poet's  feeling  for  nature  and  romance,  in 
the  Ode  to  a  Nightingale.  Just  as  his  Grecian  urn  was  no 
single  specimen  of  antiquity  that  he  had  seen,  so  it  is  not 
the  particular  nightingale  he  had  heard  singing  in  the 
Hampstead  garden  that  he  in  his  poem  invokes,  but  a  type 
of  the  race  imagined  as  singing  in  some  far-off  scene  of 
woodland  mystery  and  beauty.  Thither  he  sighs  to  follow 
her;  first  by  aid  of  the  spell  of  some  southern  vintage — a 
spell  which  he  makes  us  realise  in  lines  redolent  of  the 
southern  richness  and  joy.  Then  follows  a  contrasted  vi- 
sion of  all  his  own  and  mankind's  tribulations,  which  he 
will  leave  behind  him.  Nay,  he  needs  not  the  aid  of  Bac- 
chus—  Poetry  alone  shall  transport  him.     For  a  moment 


174  KEATS.  [chap. 

he  mistrusts  her  power,  but  the  next  moment  finds  himself 
where  he  would  be,  listening  to  the  imagined  song  in  the 
imagined  woodland,  and  divining  in  the  darkness,  by  that 
gift  whereby  his  mind  is  a  match  for  nature,  all  the  secrets 
of  the  season  and  the  night.  In  this  joy  he  remembers 
how  often  the  thought  of  death  has  seemed  welcome  to 
him,  and  thinks  it  would  be  more  welcome  now  than  ever. 
The  nightingale  would  not  cease  her  song — and  here,  by  a 
breach  of  logic  which  is  also,  I  think,  a  flaw  in  the  poetry, 
he  contrasts  the  trausitoriness  of  human  life,  meaning  the 
life  of  the  individual,  with  the  permanence  of  the  song- 
bird's life,  meaning  the  life  of  the  type.  This  last  thought 
leads  him  off  into  the  ages,  whence  he  brings  back  those 
memorable  touches  of  far-off  Bible  and  legendary  romance 
in  the  stanza  closing  with  the  words,  "  in  faery  lands  for- 
lorn ;"  and  then,  catching  up  his  own  last  word,  "  forlorn," 
with  an  abrupt  change  of  mood  and  meaning,  he  returns  to 
daily  consciousness,  and  with  the  fading  away  of  his  forest 
dream  the  poem  closes.  In  this  group  of  the  odes  it  takes 
rank  beside  the  Grecian  Urn  in  the  other.  Neither  is 
strictly  faultless,  but  such  revealing  imaginative  insight  and 
such  conquering  poetic  charm,  the  touch  that  in  striking 
so  lightly  strikes  so  deep,  who  does  not  prefer  to  faultless- 
ness?  Both  odes  are  among  the  veriest  glories  of  our  poe- 
try. Both  are  at  the  same  time  too  long  and  too  well 
known  to  quote.  Let  us  therefore  place  here,  as  an  exam- 
ple of  this  class  of  Keats's  work,  the  ode  To  Autumn. 
which  is  the  last  he  wrote,  and  contains  the  record  of  his 
quiet  September  days  at  Winchester.  It  opens  out,  indeed, 
no  such  far-reaching  avenues  of  thought  and  feeling  as  the 
two  last  mentioned,  but  in  execution  is  perhaps  the  com- 
gletest  of  them  all.  In  the  first  stanza  the  bounty,  in  the 
last  the  pensiveness,  of  the  time  are  expressed  in  words  so 


VIL]  THE  ODES.  175 

transparent  and  direct  that  we  almost  forget  they  are  words 
at  all,  and  nature  herself  and  the  season  seem  speaking  to 
us ;  while  in  the  middle  stanza  the  touches  of  literary  art 
and  Greek  personification  have  an  exquisite  congruity  and 

lightness  : 

"  Season  of  mists  and  mellow  f ruitf ulness, 

Close  bosom-friend  of  the  maturing  sun ; 
Conspiring  with  him  now  to  load  and  bless  . 

With  fruit  the  vines  that  round  the  thatch-eaves  run  ; 
To  bend  with  apples  the  moss'd  cottage  trees, 

And  fill  all  fruit  with  ripeness  to  the  core  ; 
To  swell  the  gourd,  and  plump  the  hazel  shells 

With  a  sweet  kernel ;  to  set  budding  more, 
And  still  more,  later  flowers  for  the  bees, 
Until  they  think  warm  days  will  never  cease, 

For  Summer  has  o'er-brimm'd  their  clammy  cells. 

"  Who  hath  not  seen  thee  oft  amid  thy  store  ? 
Sometimes  whoever  seeks  abroad  may  find 
Thee  sitting  careless  on  a  granary  floor, 

Thy  hair  soft-lifted  by  the  winnowing  wind  ; 
Or  on  a  half-reap'd  furrow  sound  asleep, 

DrowsM  with  the  fume  of  poppies,  while  thy  hook 
Spares  the  next  swath  and  all  its  twined  flowers  : 
And  sometimes  like  a  gleaner  thou  dost  keep 
Steady  thy  laden  head  across  a  brook  ; 
Or  by  a  cider-press,  with  patient  look, 
Thou  watchest  the  last  oozings  hours  by  hours. 

"  Where  are  the  songs  of  Spring  ?     Ay,  where  are  they  ? 
Think  not  of  them,  thou  hast  thy  music  too— 
While  barred  clouds  bloom  the  soft-dying  day, 
And  touch  the  stubble-plains  with  rosy  hue  ; 
Then  in  a  wailful  choir  the  small  gnats  mourn 
Among  the  river  sallows,  borne  aloft 

Or  sinking  as  the  light  wind  lives  or  dies  ; 
And  full-grown  lambs  loud  bleat  from  hilly  bourn  ; 


1*76  KEATS.  [chap. 

Hedge-crickets  sing ;  and  now  with  treble  soft 
The  red-breast  whistles  from  a  garden-croft ; 
And  gathering  swallows  twitter  in  the  skies." 

To  pass  from  our  poet's  work  at  this  time  in  the  several 
fields  of  romance,  epic,  ballad,  and  ode,  to  those  in  the 
field  of  drama,  is  to  pass  from  a  region  of  happy  and  as- 
sured conquest  to  one  of  failure,  though  of  failure  not 
unredeemed  by  auguries  of  future  success,  had  any  future 
been  in  store  for  him.  At  his  age  no  man  has  ever  been 
a  master  in  the  drama;  even  by  the  most  powerful  intui- 
tive genius  neither  human  nature  nor  the  difficulties  of  the 
art  itself  can  be  so  early  mastered.  The  manner  in  which 
Keats  wrote  his  first  play,  merely  supplying  the  words  to  a 
plot  contrived  as  they  went  along  by  a  friend  of  gifts  rad- 
ically inferior  to  his  own,  was  moreover  the  least  favoura- 
ble that  he  could  have  attempted.  He  brought  to  the  task 
the  mastery  over  poetic  colour  and  diction  which  we  have 
seen:  he  brought  an  impassioned  sentiment  of  romance, 
and  a  mind  prepared  to  enter  by  sympathy  into  the  hearts 
of  men  and  women  ;  while  Brown  contributed  his  ama- 
teur stage-craft,  such  as  it  was.  But  these  things  were 
not  enough.  The  power  of  sympathetic  insight  had  not 
yet  developed  in  Keats  into  one  of  dramatic  creation ;  and 
the  joint  work  of  the  friends  is  confused  in  order  and 
sequence,  and  far  from  masterly  in  conception.  Keats,  in- 
deed, makes  the  characters  speak  in  lines  flashing  with  all 
the  hues  of  poetry.  But  in  themselves  they  have  the 
effect  only  of  puppets  inexpertly  agitated :  Otho,  a  pup- 
pet type  of  royal  dignity  and  fatherly  affection  ;  Ludolph, 
of  febrile  passion  and  vacillation  ;  Erminia,  of  maidenly 
purity  ;  Conrad  and  Auranthe,  of  ambitious  lust  and  treach- 
ery. At  least  until  the  end  of  the  fourth  act  these  strict- 
ures hold   good.      From  that  point  Keats  worked  alone, 


til]  THE  PLAYS.  177 

and  the  fifth  act,  probably  in  consequence,  shows  a  great 
improvement.  There  is  a  real  dramatic  effect,  of  the 
violent  kind  affected  by  the  old  English  drama,  in  the 
disclosure  of  the  body  of  Auranthe,  dead  indeed,  at  the 
moment  when  Ludolph  in  his  madness  vainly  imagines 
himself  to  have  slain  her;  and  some  of  the  speeches  in 
which  his  frenzy  breaks  forth  remind  us  strikingly  of  Mar- 
lowe, not  only  by  their  pomp  of  poetry  and  allusion,  but 
by  the  tumult  of  the  soul  and  senses  expressed  in  them. 
Of  the  second  historical  play,  King  Stephen,  which  Keats 
began  by  himself  at  Winchester,  too  little  was  written  to 
afford  matter  for  a  safe  judgment.  The  few  scenes  he 
finished  are  not  only  marked  by  his  characteristic  splen- 
dour and  felicity  of  phrase,  they  are  full  of  a  spirit  of 
heady  action  and  the  stir  of  battle  ;  qualities  which  he  had 
not  shown  in  any  previous  work,  and  for  which  we  might 
have  doubted  his  capacity  had  not  this  fragment  been  pre- 
served. 

But  in  the  mingling  of  his  soul's  and  body's  destinies 
it  had  been  determined  that  neither  this  nor  any  other  of 
his  powers  should  be  suffered  to  ripen  farther  upon  earth. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Returji  to  "Wentworth  Place. — Autumn  occupations:  The  Cap  and 
Bells;  Kecast  of  Hyperion.  —  Growing  despondency. — Visit  of 
George  Keats  to  England. — Attack  of  illness  in  February. — Rally 
in  the  Spring. — Summer  in  Kentish  Town. — Publication  of  the 
Lamia  volume. — Relapse.— Ordered  South. — Voyage  to  Italy,  Na- 
ples, Rome. — Last  Days  and  Death.  [October,  1819  —  February, 
1821.] 

We  left  Keats  at  Winchester,  with  Otho,  Lamia,  and  the 
Ode  to  Autumn  just  written,  and  with  his  mind  set  on 
trying  to  face  life  sanely,  and  take  up  arms  like  other  men 
against  his  troubles,  instead  of  letting  imagination  magnify 
and  passion  exasperate  them  as  heretofore.  At  his  request 
Dilke  took  for  him  a  lodging  in  his  own  neighbourhood 
in  Westminster  (25  College  Street),  and  here  Keats  came 
on  the  8th  of  October  to  take  up  his  quarters.  But  alas ! 
his  blood  proved  traitor  to  his  will,  and  the  plan  of  life 
and  literary  work  in  London  broke  down  at  once  on  trial. 
The  gain  of  health  and  composure  which  he  thought  he 
had  made  at  Winchester  proved  illusory,  or  at  least  could 
only  be  maintained  at  a  distance  from  the  great  perturb- 
ing cause.  Two  days  after  his  return  he  went  to  Hamp- 
stead — "into  the  fire" — and  in  a  moment  the  flames  had 
seized  him  more  fiercely  than  ever.  It  was  the  first  time 
he  had  seen  his  mistress  for  four- months.  He  found  her 
kind,  and  from  that  hour  was  utterly  passion's  slave  again. 


chap,  viii.]      RETURN  TO  WENTWORTH  PLACE.  119 

In  the  solitude  of  his  London  lodging  he  found  that  he 
could  not  work  nor  rest  nor  fix  his  thoughts.  He  must  send 
her  a  line,  he  writes  to  Fanny  Brawne  two  days  later,  "  and 
see  if  that  will  assist  in  dismissing  you  from  my  mind  for 
ever  so  short  a  time.  Upon  my  soul  I  can  think  of  nothing 
else.  ...  I  cannot  exist  without  you.  I  am  forgetful  of 
everything  but  seeing  you  again — my  life  seems  to  stop 
there  —  I  see  no  further.  You  have  absorb'd  me."  A 
three  days'  visit  at  her  mother's  house,  followed  by  anoth- 
er of  a  day  or  two  at  the  Dilkes',  ended  in  his  giving  up 
all  resistance  to  the  spell.  Within  ten  days,  apparently, 
of  his  return  from  Winchester,  he  had  settled  again  at 
Hampstead  under  Brown's  roof,  next  door  to  the  home  of 
his  joy  and  torment.  lie  writes  with  a  true  foreboding : 
"  I  shall  be  able  to  do  nothing.  I  should  like  to  cast  the 
die  for  Love  or  Death — I  have  no  patience  with  anything 
else." 

It  was  for  death  that  the  die  was  cast,  and  from  the 
date  of  his  return  to  Wentworth  Place,  in  October,  1819, 
begins  the  melancholy  closing  chapter  of  Keats's  history. 
Of  the  triple  flame  which  was  burning  away  his  life,  the 
flame  of  genius,  of  passion,  and  of  disease,  while  the  last 
kept  smouldering  in  secret,  the  second  burnt  every  day 
more  fiercely,  and  the  first  began  from  this  time  forth  to 
sink.  Not  that  he  was  idle  during  the  ensuing  season  of 
autumn  and  early  winter ;  but  the  work  he  did  was  mark- 
ed both  by  infirmity  of  purpose  and  failure  of  power. 
For  the  present  he  determined  not  to  publish  Lamia,  Isa- 
bella, and  the  other  poems  written  since  Endymion.  He 
preferred  to  await  the  result  of  Brown's  attempt  to  get 
Otho  brought  on  the  stage,  thinking,  no  doubt  justly,  that 
a  success  in  that  field  would  help  to  win  a  candid  hearing 
for  his  poetry.     In  the  meantime  the  scoffs  of  the  party 


180  KEATS.  [chap. 

critics  had  brought  him  so  low  in  estimation  that  Brown 
in  sending-  in  the  play  thought  it  best  to  withhold  his 
friend's  name.  The  great  hope  of  the  authors  was  that 
Kean  would  see  an  opportunity  for  himself  in  the  part  of 
Ludolph.  In  this  they  were  not  disappointed ;  the  play 
was  accepted,  but  Elliston,  the  manager,  proposing  to  keep 
it  back  till  the  next  season,  or  the  next  but  one,  Keats  and 
Brown  objected  to  the  delay,  and  about  Christmas  trans- 
ferred the  offer  of  their  MS.  to  Covent  Garden,  where 
Macready,  under  Harris's  management,  was  at  this  time 
beginning  to  act  the  leading  parts.  It  was  after  a  while 
returned  unopened,  and  with  that  the  whole  matter  seems 
to  have  dropped. 

In  the  meanwhile  tragedy  was  still  the  goal  towards 
which  Keats  bent  his  hopes.  "  One  of  my  ambitions," 
he  had  written  to  Bailey  from  Winchester,  "  is  to  make 
as  great  a  revolution  in  modern  dramatic  writing  as  Kean 
has  done  in  acting."  And  now,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Taylor 
of  November  17th,  he  says  that  to  write  a  few  fine  plays 
is  still  his  greatest  ambition,  when  he  does  feel  ambitious, 
which  is  very  seldom.  The  little  dramatic  skill  he  may  as 
yet  have,  however  badly  it  might  show  in  a  drama,  would, 
he  conceives,  be  sufficient  for  a  poem  ;  and  what  he  wishes 
to  do  next  is  "  to  diffuse  the  colouring  of  St.  Agnes' 's  Eve 
throughout  a  poem  in  which  character  and  sentiment 
would  be  the  figures  to  such  drapery."  Two  or  three  such 
poems  would  be,  he  thinks,  the  best  gradus  to  the  Parnas- 
sum  altissimum  of  true  dramatic  writing.  Meantime  he 
is  for  the  moment  engaged  on  a  task  of  a  different  nature. 
"As  the  marvellous  is  the  most  enticing,  and  the  surest 
guarantee  of  harmonious  numbers,  I  have  been  endeavour- 
ing to  persuade  myself  to  untether  Fancy,  and  to  let  her 
manage  for  herself.     I  and  myself  cannot  agree  about  this 


vin.]  "THE  CAP  AND  BELLS."  IS  I 

at  all."  The  piece  to  which  Keats  here  alludes  is  evident- 
ly the  satirical  fairy  poem  of  the  Cap  and  Bells,  on  which 
we  know  him  to  have  been  at  this  time  busy.  Writing 
of  the  autumn  days  immediately  following  their  return  to 
Wentworth  Place,  Brown  says  : 

"By  chance  our  conversation  turned  on  the  idea  of  a  comic  faery 
poem  in  the  Spenser  stanza,  and  I  was  glad  to  encourage  it.  He  had 
not  composed  many  stanzas  before  he  proceeded  in  it  with  spirit.  It 
was  to  be  published  under  the  feigned  authorship  of  "  Lucy  Vaughan 
Lloyd,"  and  to  bear  the  title  of  the  Cap  and  Belh,  or,  which  he  pre- 
ferred, the  Jealousies.  This  occupied  his  mornings  pleasantly.  He 
wrote  it  with  the  greatest  facility ;  in  one  instance  I  remember  hav- 
ing copied  (for  I  copied  as  he  wrote)  as  many  as  twelve  stanzas  be- 
fore dinner."  l 

Excellent  friend  as  Brown  was  to  Keats,  he  was  not  the 
most  judicious  adviser  in  matters  of  literature,  and  the 
attempt  made  in  the  Cap  and  Bells  to  mingle  with  the 
strain  of  fairy  fancy  a  strain  of  worldly  flippancy  and  sa- 
tire was  one  essentially  alien  to  Keats's  nature.  As  long- 
as  health  and  spirits  lasted,  he  was  often  full,  as  we  have 
seen,  of  pleasantry  and  nonsense ;  but  his  wit  was  essen- 
tially amiable,2  and  he  was  far  too  tender-hearted  ever  to 
be  a  satirist.  Moreover,  the  spirit  of  poetry  in  him  was 
too  intense  and  serious  to  work  hand -in -hand  with  the 
spirit  of  banter,  as  poetry  and  banter  had  gone  hand- 
in-hand  in  some  of  the  metrical  romances  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  and  again  with  unprecedented  dexterity  and 
brilliance  in  the  early  cantos  of  Don  Juan.     It  was  partly 

i  Houghton  MSS. 

2  "He  never  spoke  of  any  one,"  says  Severn  (Houghton  MSS.), 
"  but  by  saying  something  in  their  favour,  and  this  always  so  agree- 
ably and  cleverly,  imitating  the  manner  to  increase  your  favourable 
impression  of  the  person  he  was  speaking  of." 


182  KEATS.  [chap. 

the  influence  of  the  facetious  Brown,  who  was  a  great  stu- 
dent of  Pulci  and  Boiardo,  partly  that  of  his  own  recent 
Italian  studies,  and  partly  the  dazzling  example  of  Byron's 
success,  that  now  induced  Keats  to  make  an  attempt  in 
the  same  dual  strain.  Having  already  employed  the  meas- 
ure most  fit  for  such  an  attempt,  the  ottava  rima  of  the 
Italians,  in  his  serious  poem  of  Isabella,  he  now,  by  what 
seems  an  odd  technical  perversity,  adopted  for  his  comic 
poem  the  grave  Spenserian  stanza,  with  its  sustained  and 
involved  rhymes  and  its  long-drawn  close.  Working  thus 
in  a  vein  not  truly  his  own,  and  hampered  moreover  by 
his  choice  of  metre,  Keats  nevertheless  manages  his  transi- 
tions from  grave  to  gay  with  a  light  hand,  and  the  move- 
ment of  the  Cap  and  Bells  has  much  of  his  characteristic 
suppleness  and  grace.  In  other  respects  the  poem  is  not 
a  success.  The  story,  which  appears  to  have  been  one  of 
his  own  and  Brown's  invention,  turned  on  the  perverse 
loves  of  a  fairy  emperor  and  a  fairy  princess  of  the  East. 
The  two  are  unwillingly  betrothed,  each  being  meanwhile 
enamoured  of  a  mortal.  The  eighty-eight  stanzas,  which 
were  all  that  Keats  wrote  of  the  poem,  only  carry  us  as 
far  as  the  flight  of  the  emperor  Elfinan  for  England,  which 
takes  place  at  the  moment  when  his  affianced  bride  alights 
from  her  aerial  journey  to  his  capital.  Into  the  Elfinan 
part  of  the  story  Keats  makes  it  clear  that  he  meant  some- 
how to  weave  in  the  same  tale  which  had  been  in  his  mind 
when  he  began  the  fragment  of  St.  Mark's  Eve  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  year — the  tale  of  an  English  Bertha  living 
in  a  minster  city,  and  beguiled  in  some  way  through  the 
reading  of  a  magic  book.  With  this  and  other  purely 
fanciful  elements  of  the  story  are  mixed  up  satirical  allu- 
sions to  the  events  of  the  day.  It  was  in  this  year,  1819, 
that  the  quarrels  between  the  Prince  Regent  and  his  wife 


viil]  RECAST  OF  "HYPERION."  183 

were  drawing  to  a  head;  the  public  mind  was  full  ot 
the  subject,  and  the  general  sympathy  was  vehemently 
aroused  on  the  side  of  the  scandalous  lady  in  opposition 
to  her  thrice  scandalous  husband.  The  references  to  these 
royal  quarrels  and  intrigues  in  the  Cap  and  Bells  are  gen- 
eral rather  than  particular,  although  here  and  there  indi- 
vidual names  and  characters  are  glanced  at,  as  when  "  Es- 
quire Biancopany  "  stands  manifestly,  as  Mr.  Forman  has 
pointed  out,  for  Whitbread.  But  the  social  and  personal 
satire  of  the  piece  is  in  truth  aimless  and  wTeak  enough. 
As  Keats  had  not  the  heart,  so  neither  had  he  the  worldly 
experience,  for  this  kind  of  work ;  and  beside  the  blaze  of 
the  Byronic  wit  and  devilry  his  raillery  seems  but  child's 
play.  Where  the  fun  is  of  the  purely  fanciful  and  fairy 
kind,  he  shows  abundance  of  adroitness  and  invention,  and 
in  passages  not  humourous  is  sometimes  really  himself,  his 
imagination  becoming  vivid  and  alert,  and  his  style  taking 
on  its  own  happy,  light  and  colour,  but  seldom  for  more 
than  a  stanza  or  half-stanza  at  a  time. 

Besides  his  morning  task  in  Brown's  company  on  the 
Cap  and  Bells,  Keats  had  other  work  on  hand  during  this 
November  and  December.  "  In  the  evenings,"  writes 
Brown,  "at  his  own  desire,  he  occupied  a  separate  apart- 
ment, and  was  deeply  engaged  in  re-modelling  the  frag- 
ment of  Hyperion  into  the  form  of  a  Vision."  The  result 
of  this  attempt,  which  has  been  preserved,  is  of  a  singular 
and  pathetic  interest  in  Keats's  history.  We  have  seen 
how,  in  the  previous  August,  he  had  grown  discontented 
with  the  style  and  diction  of  Hyperion,  as  being  too  artifi- 
cial and  Miltonic.  Now,  in  the  decline  of  his  powers,  he 
took  the  poem  up  again,1  and  began  to  re-write  and  great- 
ly amplify  it ;  partly,  it  would  seem,  through  a  mere  re- 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  220. 
9         N 


J  84  KEATS.  [chap. 

lapse  into  his  old  fault  of  overloading,  partly  through  a 
desire  to  give  expression  to  thoughts  and  feelings  which 
were  pressing  on  his  mind.     His  new  plan  was  to  relate 
the  fall  of  the  Titans,  not,  as  before,  in  direct  narrative,  but 
in  the  form  of  a  vision  revealed  and  interpreted  to  him  by 
a  goddess  of  the  fallen  race.     The  reader  remembers  how 
he  had   broken   off  his  work  on  Hyperion  at  the  point 
where  Mnemosyne  is  enkindling  the  brain  of  Apollo  with 
the  inspiration  of  her  ancient  wisdom.     Following  a  clue 
which  he  had  found  in  a  Latin  book  of  mythology  he  had 
lately  bought,1  he  now  identifies  this  Greek  Mnemosyne, 
the  mother  of  the  Muses,  with  the   Roman  Moneta,  and 
(being  possibly  also  aware  that  the  temple  of  Juno  Moneta 
on  the  Capitol  at  Rome  was  not  far  from  that  of  Saturn) 
makes  his  Mnemosyne-Moneta  the  priestess  and  guardian 
of  Saturn's  temple.     His  vision  takes  him  first  into  a  grove 
or  garden   of   delicious  fruits,  having  eaten  of  which  he 
sinks  into  a  slumber,  and  awakes  to  find  himself  on  the 
floor  of  a  huge  primeval  temple.     Presently  a  voice,  the 
voice  of  Moneta,  whose  form  he  cannot  yet  see  for  the 
fumes  of  incense,  summons  him  to  climb  the  steps  leading 
to  an  image  beside  which  she  is  offering  sacrifice.     Obey- 
ing her  with   difficulty,  he  questions  her  concerning  the 
mysteries  of  the  place,  and  learns  from  her,  among  other 
knowledge,  that  he  is  standing  in  the  temple  of  Saturn. 
Then  she  withdraws  the  veils  from  her  face,  at  sight  of 
which  he  feels  an  irresistible  desire  to  learn  her  thoughts; 
and  thereupon  finds  himself  conveyed  in  a  trance  by  her 

i  Auctores  Mythographi  Lalini,  ed.  Van  Staveren,  Leyden,  1742. 
Keats's  copy  of  the  book  was  bought  by  him  in  1819,  and  passed  af- 
ter his  death  into  the  hands  first  of  Brown,  and  afterwards  of  Arch- 
deacon Bailey  (Houghton  MSS.).  The  passage  about  Moneta  which 
had  wrought  in  Keats's  mind  occurs  at  p.  4,  in  the  notes  to  Hygiuus. 


viil]  RECAST  OF  "HYPERION."  185 

side  to  the  ancient  scene  of  Saturn's  overthrow.  "Deep 
in  the  shady  sadness  of  a  vale,"  etc. — from  this  point  Keats 
begiife  to  weave  into  the  new  tissue  of  his  Vision  the 
text  of  the  original  Hyperion,  with  alterations  which  are 
in  almost  all  cases  for  the  worse.  Neither  does  the  new 
portion  of  his  work  well  match  the  old.  Side  by  side 
with  impressive  passages,  it  contaius  others  where  both 
rhythm  and  diction  flag,  and  in  comparison  depends  for 
its  beauty  far  more  on  single  lines  and  passages,  and  less 
on  sustained  effects.  Keats  has  indeed  imagined  nothing 
richer  or  purer  than  the  feast  of  fruits  at  the  opening  of 
the  Vision;  and  of  supernatural  presences  he  has  perhaps 
conjured  up  none  of  such  melancholy  beauty  and  awe  as 
that  of  the  priestess  when  she  removes  her  veils.  But  the 
especial  interest  of  the  poem  lies  in  the  light  which  it 
throws  on  the  inward  distresses  of  his  mind,  and  on  the 
conception  he  had  by  this  time  come  to  entertain  of  the 
poet's  character  and  lot.  "When  Moneta  bids  him  mount 
the  steps  to  her  side,  she  warns  him  that  if  he  fails  to  do 
so  he  is  bound  to  perish  utterly  where  he  stands.  In  fact, 
he  all  but  dies  before  he  reaches  the  stair,  but  reviving,  as- 
cends and  learns  from  her  the  meaning  of  the  ordeal : 

"None  can  usurp  this  height,"  returned  that  shade, 

"But  those  to  whom  the  miseries  of  the  world 

Are  misery,  and  will  not  let  them  rest. 

All  else  who  find  a  haven  in  the  world, 

Where  they  may  thoughtless  sleep  away  their  days, 

If  by  a  chance  into  this  fane  they  come, 

Rot  on  the  pavement  where  thou  rottedst  half." 

"  Are  there  not  thousands  in  the  world,"  said  I, 

Encouraged  by  the  sooth  voice  of  the  shade, 

"  Who  love  their  fellows  even  to  the  death, 

Who  feel  the  giant  agony  of  the  world, 

And  more,  like  slaves  to  poor  humanity, 


186  KEATS.  [chap. 

Labour  for  mortal  good  ?     I  sure  should  see 

Other  men  here,  but  I  am  here  alone." 

"  Those  whom  thou  spakest  of  are  no  visionaries/' 

Rejoin' d  that  voice ;  "  they  are  no  dreamers  weak ; 

They  seek  no  wonder  but  the  human  face, 

No  music  but  a  happy-noted  voice  : 

They  come  not  here,  they  have  no  thought  to  come ; 

And  thou  art  here,  for  thou  art  less  than  they. 

What  benefit  canst  thou  do,  or  all  thy  tribe, 

To  the  great  world  ?     Thou  art  a  dreaming  thing, 

A  fever  of  thyself :  think  of  the  earth — 

What  bliss,  even  in  hope,  is  there  for  thee  ? 

What  haven  ?     Every  creature  hath  its  home, 

Every  sole  man  hath  days  of  joy  and  pain, 

Whether  his  labours  be  sublime  or  low — 

The  pain  alone,  the  joy  alone,  distinct : 

Only  the  dreamer  venoms  all  his  days, 

Bearing  more  woe  than  all  his  sins  deserve. 

Therefore,  that  happiness  be  somewhat  shared, 

Such  things  as  thou  art  are  admitted  oft 

Into  like  gardens  thou  didst  pass  erewhile, 

And  suffer'd  in  these  temples."  1 

Tracing  the  process  of  Keats's  thought  through  this 
somewhat  obscure  imagery — the  poet,  he  means,  is  one 
who  to  indulge  in  dreams  withdraws  himself  from  the 
wholesome  activities  of  ordinary  men.  At  first  he  is  lulled 
to  sleep  by  the  sweets  of  poetry  (the  fruits  of  the  garden); 
awakening,  he  finds  himself  on  the  floor  of  a  solemn  tem- 
ple, with  Mnemosyne,  the  mother  and  inspirer  of  song,  en- 
throned all  but  inaccessibly  above  him.  If  he  is  a  trifler, 
indifferent  to  the  troubles  of  his  fellow  men,  he  is  con- 
demned to  perish  swiftly  and  be  forgotten ;  he  is  suffered 
to  approach  the  goddess,  to  commune  with  her  and  catch 

1  Mrs.  Owen  was  the  first  of  Keats's  critics  to  call  attention  to  this 
passage,  without,  however,  understanding  the  special  significance  it 
derives  from  the  date  of  its  composition. 


VIIL]  RECAST  OF  "HYPERION."  187 

her  inspiration,  only  on  condition  that  he  shares  all  those 
troubles  and  makes  them  his  own.  And  even  then  his  por- 
tion is  far  harder  and  less  honourable  than  that  of  com- 
mon men.  In  the  conception  Keats  here  expresses  of  the 
human  mission  and  responsibility  of  his  art  there  is  noth- 
ing new.  Almost  from  the  first  dawning  of  his  ambition 
he  had  looked  beyond  the  mere  sweets  of  poetry  towards 

"  a  nobler  life ; 
Where  I  may  find  the  agonies,  the  strife 
Of  human  hearts." 

What  is  new  is  the  bitterness  with  which  he  speaks  of  the 
poet's  lot  even  at  its  best : 

"  Only  the  dreamer  venoms  all  his  days, 
Bearing  more  woe  than  all  his  sins  deserve." 

Through  what  a  circle  must  the  spirit  of  Keats,  when 
this  bitter  cry  broke  from  him,  have  travelled  since  the 
days,  only  three  years  before,  when  he  was  never  tired  of 
singing  by  anticipation  the  joys  and  glories  of  the  poetic 

life: 

"  These  are  the  living  pleasures  of  the  bard, 

But  richer  far  posterity's  award. 

What  shall  he  murmur  with  his  latest  breath, 

When  his  proud  eye  looks  through  the  film  of  death  ?" 

His  present  cry  in  its  bitterness  is  in  truth  a  cry  not  so 
much  of  the  spirit  as  of  the  flesh,  or  rather  of  the  spirit 
vanquished  by  the  flesh.  The  wasting  of  his  vital  powers 
by  latent  disease  was  turning  all  his  sensations  and  emo- 
tions into  pain— at  once  darkening  the  shadow  of  impend- 
ing poverty,  increasing  the  natural  importunity  of  ill-bod- 
ing instincts  at  his  heart,  and  exasperating  into  agony  the 
unsatisfied  cravings  of  his  passion.     In  verses  at  this  time 


188  KEATS.  [chap. 

addressed,  though  doubtless  not  shown,  to  his  mistress,  he 
exclaims  once  and  again  in  tones  like  this : 

"  Where  shall  I  learn  to  get  my  peace  again  ?" 

"  0  for  some  sunny  spell 
To  dissipate  the  shadows  of  this  hell ;" 

or  at  the  conclusion  of  a  piteous  sonnet: 

"  Yourself— your  soul— in  pity  give  me  all, 

Withhold  no  atom's  atom  or  I  die, 
Or  living  on  perhaps,  your  wretched  thrall, 

Forget,  in  the  mist  of  idle  misery, 
Life's  purposes — the  palate  of  the  mind 
Losing  its  gust,  and  my  ambition  blind." 

That  he  might  win  peace  by  marriage  with  the  object 
of  his  passion  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  Keats 
as  possible  in  the  present  state  of  his  fortunes.  "  How- 
ever selfishly  I  may  feel,"  he  had  written  to  her  some 
months  earlier,  "  I  am  sure  I  could  never  act  selfishly." 
The  Brawnes  on  their  part  were  comfortably  off,  but  what 
his  instincts  of  honour  and  independence  forbade  him  to 
ask,  hers  of  tenderness  could  perhaps  hardly  be  expected 
to  offer.  As  the  autumn  wrore  into  winter,  Keats's  suffer- 
ings, disguise  them  as  he  might,  could  not  escape  the  no- 
tice of  his  affectionate  comrade  Brown.  Without  under- 
standing the  cause,  Brown  was  not  slow  to  perceive  the 
effect,  and  to  realise  how  vain  were  the  assurances  Keats 
had  given  him  at  Winchester,  that  the  pressure  of  real 
troubles  would  stiffen  him  against  troubles  of  imagination, 
and  that  he  was  not  and  would  not  allow  himself  to  be  un- 
happy. 

"1  quickly  perceived,"  writes  Brown,  "that  he  was  more  so  than 
I  had  feared ;  his  abstraction,  his  occasional  lassitude  of  mind,  and, 
frequently,  his  assumed  tranquillity  of  countenance  gave  me  great  un- 


viii.]  GROWING  DESPONDENCY.       .  189 

easiness.  He  was  unwilling  to  speak  on  the  subject ;  and  I  could  do 
no  more  than  attempt,  indirectly,  to  cheer  him  with  hope,  avoiding  that 
word  however.  .  .  .  All  that  a  friend  could  say,  or  offer,  or  urge  was 
not  enough  to  heal  his  many  wounds.  He  listened,  and  in  kindness, 
or  soothed  by  kindness,  showed  tranquillity,  but  nothing  from  a  friend 
could  relieve  him,  except  on  a  matter  of  inferior  trouble.  He  was 
too  thoughtful,  or  too  unquiet,  and  he  began  to  be  reckless  of  health. 
Among  other  proofs  of  recklessness,  he  was  secretly  taking,  at  times, 
a  few  drops  of  laudanum  to  keep  up  his  spirits.  It  was  discovered 
by  accident,  and  without  delay  revealed  to  me.  He  needed  not  to  be 
warned  of  the  danger  of  such  a  habit ;  but  I  rejoiced  at  his  promise 
never  to  take  another  drop  without  my  knowledge ;  for  nothing  could 
induce  him  to  break  his  word  when  once  given — which  was  a  dif- 
ficulty. Still,  at  the  very  moment  of  my  being  rejoiced,  this  was 
an  additional  proof  of  his  rooted  misery."1 

Some  of  the  same  symptoms  were  observed  by  Hay  don, 
and  have  been  described  by  him  with  his  usual  reckless 
exaggeration,  and  love  of  contrasting  another's  weakness 
with  his  own  strength.2  To  his  friends  in  general  Keats 
bore  himself  as  affectionately  as  ever,  but  they  began  to 
notice  that  he  had  lost  his  cheerfulness.  One  of  them, 
Severn,  at  this  time  competed  for  and  carried  off  (De- 
cember 9,  1819)  the  annual  gold  medal  of  the  Academy 
for  a  historical  painting,  which  had  not  been  adjudged 
for  several  years.  The  subject  was  Spenser's  "  Cave  of 
Despair."  We  hear  of  Keats  flinging  out  in  anger  from 
among  a  company  of  elder  artists  where  the  deserts  of 
the  winner  were  disparaged  ;  and  we  find  him  making  an 
appointment  with  Severn  to  go  and  see  his  prize  picture — 
adding,  however,  parenthetically,  from  his  troubled  heart, 
"  You  had  best  put  me  into  your  Cave  of  Despair."  In 
December  his  letters  to  his  sister  make  mention  several 
times  of  ill  health,  and  once  of  a  suggestion  which  had 
1  Houghton  MSS.  2  See  p.  191,  note. 


190  KEATS.  [chap. 

been  made  to  him  by  Mr.  Abbey,  and  which  for  a  mo- 
ment he  was  willing  to  entertain,  that  he  should  take  ad- 
vantage of  an  opening  in  the  tea-broking  line  in  connection 
with  that  gentleman's  business.  Early  in  January,  1820, 
George  Keats  appeared  on  a  short  visit  to  London.  He 
was  now  settled  with  his  wife  and  child  in  the  far  West, 
at  Louisville,  on  the  Ohio.  Here  his  first  trading  ad- 
venture had  failed,  owing,  as  he  believed,  to  the  dishonesty 
of  the  naturalist  Audubon,  who  was  concerned  in  it,  and 
he  was  brought  to  England  by  the  necessity  of  getting 
possession  from  the  reluctant  Abbey  of  a  further  portion 
of  the  scanty  funds  still  remaining  to  the  brothers  from 
their  grandmother's  gift.  His  visit  lasted  only  three  weeks, 
during  which  John  made  no  attempt  to  unbosom  himself 
to  him  as  of  old.  "  He  was  not  the  same  being,"  wrote 
George,  looking  back  on  the  time  some  years  afterwards ; 
"  although  his  reception  of  me  was  as  warm  as  heart  could 
wish,  he  did  not  speak  with  his  former  openness  and  unre- 
serve, he  had  lost  the  reviving  custom  of  venting  his  griefs." 
In  a  letter  which  the  poet  wrote  to  his  sister-in-law  while 
her  husband  was  in  England,  he  attempts  to  keep  up  the 
old  vein  of  lively  affectionate  fun  and  spirits,  but  soon 
falls  involuntarily  into  one  of  depression  and  irritation 
against  the  world.  Of  his  work  he  says  nothing,  and  it  is 
clear  from  Brown's  narrative  that  both  his  morning  and 
his  evening  task — the  Cap  and  Bells  and  the  Vision — 
had  been  dropped  some  time  before  this,1  and  left  in  the 
fragmentary  state  in  which  we  possess  them. 

George  left  for  Liverpool  on  Friday,  January  28th.  A 
few  days  later  Keats  was  seized  by  the  first  overt  attack 
of  the  fatal  mischief  which  had  been  set  up  in  his  consti- 

1  "Interrupted,"  says  Brown,  oracularly,  in  Houghton  MSS.,  "  by  a 
circumstance  which  it  is  needless  to  mention." 


tiil]  ATTACK  OF  ILLNESS.  191 

tution  by  the  exertions  of  his  Scotch  tour,  and  which 
recent  agitations,  and  perhaps  imprudences,  had  aggra- 
vated. 

"  One  night,"  writes  Brown — it  was  on  the  Thursday,  February  3d 
— "at  eleven  o'clock,  he  came  into  the  house  in  a  state  that  looked 
like  fierce  intoxication.  Such  a  state  in  him,  I  knew,  was  impos- 
sible ; J  it  therefore  was  the  more  fearful.  I  asked  hurriedly, '  What 
is  the  matter?  you  are  fevered.'  'Yes,  yes,' he  answered, 'I  was 
on  the  outside  of  the  stage  this  bitter  day  till  I  was  severely  chilled 
—but  now  I  don't  feel  it.  Fevered  !— of  course,  a  little.'  He  mild- 
ly and  instantly  yielded,  a  property  in  his  nature  towards  any  friend, 
to  my  request  that  he  should  go  to  bed.  I  followed  with  ike  best 
immediate  remedy  in  my  power.  I  entered  his  chamber  as  he  leapt 
into  bed.  On  entering  the  cold  sheets,  before  his  head  was  on  the 
pillow,  he  slightly  coughed,  and  I  heard  him  say,  '  That  is  blood 
from  my  mouth.'  I  went  towards  him ;  he  was  examining  a  single 
drop  of  blood  upon  the  sheet.  '  Bring  me  the  candle,  Brown,  and 
let  me  see  this  blood.'  After  regarding  it  steadfastly,  he  looked  up 
in  my  face  with  a  calmness  of  countenance  that  I  can  never  forget, 
and  said,  '  I  know  the  colour  of  that  blood — it  is  arterial  blood — I 
cannot  be  deceived  in  that  colour — that  drop  of  blood  is  my  death- 
warrant —  I  must  die.'  I  ran  for  a  surgeon  ;  my  friend  was  bled; 
and  at  five  in  the  morning  I  left  him  after  he  had  been  some  time 
in  a  quiet  sleep." 

Keats  knew  his  case,  and  from  the  first  moment  had 
foreseen  the  issue  truly.  He  survived  for  twelve  months 
longer,  but  the  remainder  of  his  life  was  but  a  life  -  in- 
death.  How  many  are  there  among  us  to  whom  such 
lacrymae  rerum  come  not  home  ?  Happy,  at  least,  are 
they  whose  lives  this  curse  consumption  has  not  darkened 
wTith  sorrow  unquenchable  for  losses  past,  with  appre- 
hensions never  at  rest  for  those  to  come  —  who   know 

1  This  passing  phrase  of  Brown,  who  lived  with  Keats  in  the 
closest   daily   companionship,  by  itself   sufficiently   refutes   certain 
statements  of  Haydon.     But  see  Appendix,  p.  228. 
9* 


192  KEATS.  [chaf 

not  what  it  is  to  watch,  in  some  haven  of  delusive  hope 
under  Mediterranean  palms,  or  amid  the  glittering  winter 
peace  of  Alpine  snows,  their  dearest  and  their  brightest 
perish.  The  malady  in  Keats's  case  ran  through  the 
usual  phases  of  deceptive  rally  and  inevitable  relapse. 
The  doctors  would  not  admit  that  his  lungs  were  injured, 
and  merely  prescribed  a  lowering  regimen  and  rest  from 
mental  excitement.  The  weakness  and  nervous  prostra- 
tion of  the  patient  were  at  first  excessive,  and  he  could 
bear  to  see  nobody  but  Brown,  who  nursed  him  affection- 
ately day  and  night.  After  a  week  or  so  he  was  able  to 
receive  little  daily  visits  from  his  betrothed,  and  to  keep 
up  a  constant  interchange  of  notes  with  her.  A  hint, 
which  his  good  feelings  wrung  from  him,  that  under  the 
circumstances  he  ought  to  release  her  from  her  engage- 
ment, was  not  accepted,  and  for  a  time  he  became  quieter 
and  more  composed.  To  his  sister  at  Walthamstow  he 
wrote  often  and  cheerfully  from  his  sick-bed,  and  pleasant 
letters  to  some  of  his  men  friends;  among  them  one  to 
James  Rice,  which  contains  this  often  quoted  and  touclp 
ing  picture  of  his  state  of  mind  : 

"  I  may  say  that  for  six  months  before  I  was  taken  ill  I  had  not 
passed  a  tranquil  day.  Either  that  gloom  overspread  me,  or  I  was  suf- 
fering under  passionate  feeling,  or  if  I  turned  to  versify  some,  that  acer- 
bated the  poison  of  either  sensation.  The  beauties  of  nature  had  lost 
their  power  over  me.  How  astonishingly  (here  I  must  premise  that 
illness,  as  far  as  I  can  judge  in  so  short  a  time,  has  relieved  my  mind 
of  a  load  of  deceptive  thoughts  and  images,  and  makes  me  perceive 
things  in  a  truer  light) — how  astonishingly  does  the  chance  of  leaving 
the  world  impress  a  sense  of  its  natural  beauties  upon  us !  Like 
poor  Falstaff,  though  I  do  not  '  babble,'  I  think  of  green  fields ;  I 
muse  with  the  greatest  affection  on  every  flower  I  have  known  from 
my  infancy — their  shapes  and  colours  are  as  new  to  me  as  if  I  had 
just  created  them  with  a  superhuman  fancy." 


viii.]  RALLY  IN  THE  SPRING.  193 

The  greatest  pleasure  be  had  experienced  in  life,  Keats 
said  at  another  time,  was  in  watching  the  growth  of  flow- 
ers ;  and  in  a  discussion  on  the  literary  merits  of  the  Bible 
he  once,  says  Hazlitt,  found  fault  with  the  Hebrew  poetry 
for  saying  so  little  about  them.  What  he  wants  to  see 
again,  he  writes  now  further  from  his  sick-bed,  are  "  the 
simple  flowers  of  our  spring."  And  in  the  course  of 
April,  after  being  nearly  two  months  a  prisoner,  he  began 
gradually  to  pick  up  strength  and  get  about.  Even  as 
early  as  the  25th  of  March  we  hear  of  him  going  into 
London,  to  the  private  view  of  Haydon's  "  Entry  into 
Jerusalem,"  where  the  painter  tells  how  he  found  him  and 
Hazlitt  in  a  corner,  "  really  rejoicing."  Keats's  friends,  in 
whose  minds  his  image  had  always  been  associated  with 
the  ideas  of  intense  vitality  and  of  fame  in  store,  could 
not  bring  themselves  to  believe  but  that  he  would  recover. 
Brown  had  arranged  to  start  early  in  May  on  a  second 
walking-tour  in  Scotland,  and  the  doctor  actually  advised 
Keats  to  go  with  him  ;  a  folly  on  which  he  knew  his  own 
state  too  well  to  venture.  He  went  with  Brown  on  the 
smack  as  far  as  Gravesend,  and  then  returned;  not  to 
Hampstead,  but  to  a  lodging  in  Wesleyan  Place,  Kentish 
Town.  He  had  chosen  this  neighbourhood  for  the  sake 
of  the  companionship  of  Leigh  Hunt,  who  was  living  in 
Mortimer  Street,  close  by.  Keats  remained  at  Wesleyan 
Place  for  about  seven  weeks  during  May  and  June,  living 
an  invalid  life,  and  occasionally  taking  advantage  of  the 
weather  to  go  to  an  exhibition  in  London  or  for  a  drive 
on  Hampstead  Heath.  During  the  first  weeks  of  his  ill- 
ness he  had  been  strictly  enjoined  to  avoid  not  only  the 
excitement  of  writing,  but  even  that  of  reading,  poetry. 
About  this  time  he  speaks  of  intending  to  begin  (meaning 
begin  again)  soon  on  the  Cap  and  Bells.     But  in  fact  the 


194  KEATS.  [chap. 

only  work  he  really  did  was  that  of  seeing  through  the 
press,  with  some  slight  revision  of  the  text,  the  new  vol- 
ume of  poems  which  his  friends  had  at  last  induced  him 
to  put  forward.  This  is  the  immortal  volume  containing 
Lamia,  Isabella,  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  Hyperion,  and.  the 
Odes.  Of  the  poems  written  during  Keats's  twenty 
months  of  inspiration,  from  March,  1818,  to  October,  1819, 
none  of  importance  are  omitted  except  The  Eve  of  St. 
Mark,  the  Ode  on  Indolence,  and  La  Belle  Dame  sans 
Merci.  The  first  Keats  no  doubt  thought  too  fragment- 
ary, and  the  second  too  unequal;  La  Belle  Dame  sans 
Merci  he  had  let  Hunt  have  for  his  periodical,  the  Indica- 
tor, where  it  was  printed  (with  alterations  not  for  the  bet- 
ter) on  May  20,  1820.  Hyperion,  as  the  publishers  men- 
tion in  a  note,  was  only  at  their  special  desire  included  in 
the  book ;  it  is  given  in  its  original  shape,  the  poet's 
friends,  says  Brown,  having  made  him  feel  that  they 
thought  the  re-cast  no  improvement.  The  volume  came 
out  in  the  first  week  of  July.  An  admirably  kind  and 
discreet  review  by  Leigh  Hunt  appeared  in  the  Indicator 
at  the  beginning  of  August ; *  and  in  the  same  month  Jef- 
frey, in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  for  the  first  time  broke  si- 
lence in  Keats's  favour.  The  impression  made  on  the 
more  intelligent  order  of  readers  may  be  inferred  from 
the  remarks  of  Crabbe  Robinson  in  his  Diaries  for  the 
following  December : 2  "  My  book  has  had  good  suc- 
cess   among    the    literary    people,"    wrote   Keats   a   few 

1  A  week  or  two  later  Leigh  Hunt  printed  in  the  Indicator  a  few 
stanzas  from  the  Cap  and  Bells,  and  about  the  same  time  dedicated  to 
Keats  his  translation  of  Tasso's  Amyntas,  speaking  of  the  original  as 
"  an  early  work  of  a  celebrated  poet  whose  fate  it  was  to  be  equally 
pestered  by  the  critical  and  admired  by  the  poetical." 

2  See  Crabbe  Robinson,  Diaries,  vol.  ii.,  p.  197,  sqq. 


Tin.]  SUMMER  IN  KENTISH  TOWN.  195 

weeks  after  its  appearance,  "and  I  believe  has  a  mod- 
erate sale." 

But  bad  the  success  been  even  far  greater  than  it  was, 
Keats  was  in  no  heart  and  no  health  for  it  to  cheer  him. 
Passion  with  lack  of  hope  were  working  havoc  in  his 
blood,  and  frustrating  any  efforts  of  nature  towards  recov- 
ery. The^  relapse  was  not  long  delayed.  Fresh  haemor- 
rhages occurring  on  the  22d  and  23d  of  June,  he  moved 
from  his  lodgings  in  Wesleyan  Place  to  be  nursed  by  the 
Hunts  at  their  house  in  Mortimer  Street.  Here  every- 
thing was  done  that  kindness  could  suggest  to  keep  him 
amused  and  comforted,  but  all  in  vain  ;  he  "  would  keep 
his  eyes  fixed  all  day,"  as  he  afterwards  avowed,  on  Hamp- 
stead;  and  once  when  at  Hunt's  suggestion  they  took  a 
drive  in  that  direction,  and  rested  on  a  seat  in  Well  Walk, 
he  burst  into  a  flood  of  unwonted  tears,  and  declared  his 
heart  was  breaking.  In  writing  to  Fanny  Brawne  he  at 
times  cannot  disguise  nor  control  his  misery,  but  breaks 
into  piteous  outcries,  the  complaints  of  one  who  feels  him- 
self chained  and  desperate  while  mistress, and  friends  are 
free,  and  whose  heart  is  racked  between  desire  and  help- 
lessness, and  a  thousand  daily  pangs  of  half-frantic  jeal- 
ousy and  suspicion.  "Hamlet's  heart  was  full  of  such 
misery  as  mine  is  when  he  said  to  Ophelia, '  Go  to  a  nun- 
nery, go,  go  !'  "  Keats  when  he  wrote  thus  was  not  him- 
self, but  only,  in  his  own  words,  "  a  fever  of  himself ;"  and 
to  seek  cause  for  his  complaints  in  anything  but  his  own 
distempered  state  would  be  unjust  equally  to  his  friends 
and  his  betrothed.  Wound  as  they  might  at  the  time,  we 
know  from  her  own  words  that  they  left  no  impression  of 
unkindness  on  her  memory.1 

1  See  Appendix,  p.  228. 


196  KEATS.  [chap. 

Such,  at  this  time,  was  Keats's  condition  that  the  slight- 
est shock  unmanned  him,  and  he  could  not  bear  the  en- 
trance of  an  unexpected  person  or  stranger.  After  he  had 
been  some  seven  weeks  with  the  Hunts,  it  happened  on 
the  12th  of  August,  through  the  misconduct  of  a  servant, 
that  a  note  from  Fanny  Brawne  was  delivered  to  him 
opened  and  two  days  late.  This  circumstance,  we  are  told, 
so  affected  him  that  he  could  not  endure  to  stay  longer  in 
the  house,  but  left  it  instantly,  intending  to  go  back  to  his 
old  lodgings  in  Well  Walk.  The  Brawnes,  however, 
would  not  suffer  this,  but  took  him  into  their  own  home 
and  nursed  him.  Under  the  eye  and  tendance  of  his  be- 
trothed he  found,  during  the  next  few  weeks,  some  mitiga- 
tion of  his  sufferings.  Haydon  came  one  day  to  sec  him, 
and  has  told  with  a  painter's  touch  how  he  found  him 
"lying  in  a  white  bed,  with  white  quilt  and  white  sheets; 
the  only  colour  visible  was  the  hectic  flush  of  his  cheeks. 
He  was  deeply  affected,  and  so  was  I." '  Ever  since  his 
relapse  at  the  end  of  June,  Keats  had  been  warned  by  the 
doctors  that  a  winter  in  England  would  be  too  much  for 
him,  and  had  been  trying  to  bring  himself  to  face  the 
prospect  of  a  journey  to  Italy.  The  Shelleys  had  heard 
through  the  Gisbornes  of  Keats's  relapse,  and  Shelley  now 
wrote  in  terras  of  the  most  delicate  and  sympathetic  kind- 
ness inviting  him  to  come  and  take  up  his  residence  with 
them  at  Pisa.  This  letter  reached  Keats  immediately 
after  his  return  to  Hampstead.  He  replied  in  an  uncertain 
tone,  showing  himself  deeply  touched  by  the  Shelleys' 
friendship;  but  as  to  the  Cenci,  which  had  just  been  sent 
him,  and  generally  as  to  Shelley's  and  his  own  work  in 

1  Houghton  MSS.  In  both  the  Autobiography  and  the  Corre- 
spondence the  passage  is  amplified  with  painful  and  probably  not 
trustworthy  additions. 


Tin.] 


ORDERED  SOUTH.  197 


poetry,  finding  nothing  very  cordial  or  much  to  the  pur- 
pose to  say. 

As  to  the  plan  of  wintering  in  Italy,  Keats  had  by  this 
time  made  up  his  mind  to  try  it,  "  as  a  soldier  marches  up 
to  a  battery."     His  hope  was  that  Brown  would  accom- 
pany him,  but  the  letters  he  had  written  to  that  friend  in 
the  Highlands  were  delayed  in  delivery,  and  the  time  for 
Keats's°departure  was  fast  approaching,  while  Brown  still 
remained  in  ignorance  of  his  purpose.     In  the  meantime 
another  companion  offered  himself  in  the  person  of  Severn, 
who  having  won,  as  we  have  seen,  the  gold  medal  of  the 
Royal  Academy  the  year  before,  determined  now  to  go 
and  work  at  Rome  with  a  view  to  competing  for  the  trav- 
elling  studentship.     Keats  and  Severn   accordingly  took 
passage   for  Naples  on  board  the   ship  Maria   Crowther 
which  sailed  from  London  on  Sept.  18th.1     Several  of  the 
friends  who  loved  Keats  best  went  on  board  with  him  as 
far  as  Gravesend,  and  among  them  Mr.  Taylor,  who  had 
just  helped  him  with  money  for  his  journey  by  the  pur- 
chase for  £100  of  the  copyright  of  Endymion.     As  soon 
as  the  ill  news  of  his  health  reached  Brown  in  Scotland, 
he  hastened  to  make  the  best  of  his  way  south,  and  for 
that  purpose  caught  a  smack  at  Dundee,  which  arrived  in 
the  Thames  on  the  same  evening  as  the  Maria  Crowther 
sailed ;  so  that  the  two  friends  lay  on  that  night  within 
hail  of  each  other  off  Gravesend  unawares. 

The  voyage  at  first  seemed  to  do  Keats  good,  and  Severn 

»  I  have  the  date  of  sailing  from  Lloyd's,  through  the  kindness  of 
the  secretary,  Col.  Hozier.  For  the  particulars  of  the  voyage  and 
the  time  following  it,  I  have  drawn  in  almost  equal  degrees  from  the 
materials  published  by  Lord  Houghton,  by  Mr.  Forman,  by  Severn 
himself  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  xi.,  p.  401,  and  from  the  unpublished 
Houghton  and  Severn  MSS. 


198  KEATS.  [chap. 

was  struck  by  Ins  vigour  of  appetite  and  apparent  cheer- 
fulness. The  fever  of  travel  and  change  is  apt  to  produce 
this  deceptive  effect  in  a  consumptive  patient,  and  in 
Keats's  case,  aided  by  his  invincible  spirit  of  pleasantness 
to  those  about  him,  it  was  sufficient  to  disguise  his  suffer- 
ings, and  to  raise  the  hopes  of  his  companion  throughout 
the  voyage  and  for  some  time  afterwards.  Contrary  winds 
held  them  beating  about  the  Chanuel,  and  ten  days  after 
starting  they  had  got  no  farther  than  Portsmouth,  where 
Keats  landed  for  a  day,  and  paid  a  visit  to  his  friends  at 
Bedhampton.  On  board  ship  in  the  Solent  immediately 
afterwards  he  wrote  to  Brown  a  letter  confiding  to  him 
the  secret  of  his  torments  more  fully  than  he  had  ever  con- 
fided it  face  to  face.  Even  if  his  body  would  recover  of 
itself,  his  passion,  he  says,  would  prevent  it :  "  The  very 
thino-  which  I  want  to  live  most  for  will  be  a  creat  occa- 
sion  of  my  death.  I  cannot  help  it.  Who  can  help  it? 
Were  I  in  health  it  would  make  me  ill,  and  how  can  I 
bear  it  in  my  state?  I  wish  for  death  every  day  and  night 
to  deliver  me  from  these  pains,  and  then  T  wish  death 
away,  for  death  would  destroy  even  these  pains,  which  are 
better  than  nothing.  Land  and  sea,  weakness  and  decline, 
are  great  separators,  but  Death  is  the  great  divorcer  for 
ever." 

On  the  night  when  Keats  wTrote  these  words  (Sept.  28th) 
Brown  was  staying  with  the  Dilkes  at  Chichester,  so  that 
the  two  friends  had  thus  narrowly  missed  seeing  each  other 
once  more.  The  ship  putting  to  sea  again,  still  with  ad- 
verse winds,  there  came  next  to  Keats  that  day  of  mo- 
mentary calm  and  lightening  of  the  spirit  of  which  Severn 
has  left  us  the  record,  and  the  poet  himself  a  testimony  in 
the  last,  and  one  of  the  most  beautiful,  of  his  sonnets. 
They  landed   on    the  Dorsetshire   coast,  apparently  near 


viii.]  VOYAGE  TO  ITALY.  199 

Lulworth,  and  spent  a  day  exploring  its  rocks  and  caves, 
the  beauties  of  which  Keats  showed  and  interpreted  with 
the  delighted  insight  of  one  initiated  from  birth  into  the 
secrets  of  nature.  On  board  ship  the  same  night  he  wrote 
the  sonnet  which  every  reader  of  English  knows  so  well, 
placing  it,  by  a  pathetic  choice  or  chance,  opposite  the 
heading  a  Lover's  Complaint,  on  a  blank  leaf  of  the  folio 
copy  of  Shakspeare's  poems  which  had  been  given  him 
by  Reynolds,  and  which  in  marks,  notes,  and  under-scor- 
ings  bears  so  many  other  interesting  traces  of  his  thought 
and  feeling : 

"Bright  star,  would  I  were  stedfast  as  thou  art, 

Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night 
And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart, 

Like  nature's  patient,  sleepless  Eremite, 
The  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 

Of  cold  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores, 
Or  gazing  on  the  new  soft-fallen  mask 

Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors — 
No — yet  still  stedfast,  still  unchangeable, 

Pillow'd  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast, 
To  feel  for  ever  its  soft  fall  and  swell, 

Awake  for  ever  in  a  sweet  unrest, 
Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender-taken  breath, 
And  so  live  ever — or  else  swoon  to  death." 

These  were  Keats's  last  verses.  With  the  single  exception 
of  the  sonnet  beginning  "  The  day  is  gone,  and  all  its 
sweets  are  gone,"  composed  probably  immediately  after 
his  return  from  Winchester,  they  are  the  only  love-verses 
in  which  his  passion  is  attuned  to  tranquillity  ;  and  surely 
no  death-song  of  lover  or  poet  came  ever  in  a  strain  of 
more  unfevered  beauty  and  tenderness,  or  with  images  of 
such  a  refreshing  and  solemn  purity. 


200  KEATS.  [chap. 

Getting  clear  of  the  Channel  at  last,  the  vessel  was  caught 
by  a  violent  storm  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay  ;  and  Severn  wak- 
ing at  night,  and  finding  the  water  rushing  through  their 
cabin,  called  out  to  Keats,  "  half  fearing  he  might  be  dead," 
and  to  his  relief  was  answered  cheerfully  with  the  first  line 
of  Arne's  long-popular  song  from  Artaxerxes — "Water 
parted  from  the  sea."  As  the  storm  abated  Keats  began 
to  read  the  shipwreck  canto  of  Don  Juan,  but  found  its 
reckless  and  cynic  brilliancy  intolerable,  and  presently  flung 
the  volume  from  him  in  disgust.  A  dead  calm  followed ; 
after  which  the  voyage  proceeded  without  farther  incident, 
except  the  dropping  of  a  shot  across  the  ship's  bow  by  a 
Portuguese  man-of-war,  in  order  to  bring  her  to  and  ask  a 
question  about  privateers.  After  a  voyage  of  over  four 
weeks  the  Maria  Crowther  arrived  in  the  Bay  of  Naples, 
and  wras  there  subjected  to  ten  days'  quarantine,  during 
which,  says  Keats,  he  summoned  up,  "  in  a  kind  of  desper- 
ation," more  puns  than  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  be- 
fore. A  Miss  Cotterill,  consumptive  like  himself,  was 
among  his  fellow -passengers,  and  to  her  Keats  showed 
himself  full  of  cheerful  kindness  from  first  to  last,  the  sight 
of  her  sufferings  inwardly  preying  all  the  while  on  his 
nerves,  and  contributing  to  aggravate  his  own.  He  admits 
as  much  in  writing  from  Naples  harbour  to  Mrs.  Brawne ; 
and  in  the  same  letter  says,  "  0  what  an  account  I  could 
give  you  of  the  Bay  of  Naples  if  I  could  once  more  feel 
myself  a  Citizen  of  this  world — I  feel  a  spirit  in  my  Brain 
would  lay  it  forth  pleasantly."  The  effort  he  constantly 
made  to  keep  bright,  and  to  show  an  interest  in  the  new 
world  of  colour  and  classic  beauty  about  him,  partly  im- 
posed on  Severn ;  but  in  a  letter  he  wrote  to  Brown  from 
Naples  on  Nov.  1st,  soon  after  their  landing,,  his  secret 
anguish  of  sense  and  spirit  breaks  out  terribly : 


vin.  ]  NAPLES.  201 

"I  can  bear  to  die — I  cannot  bear  to  leave  her.  .  .  .  Oh  God !  God  ! 
God!  Everything  I  have  in  my  trunks  that  reminds  me  of  her  goes 
through  me  like  a  spear.  The  silk  lining  she  put  in  my  travelling 
cap  scalds  my  head.  My  imagination  is  horribly  vivid  about  her — I 
see  her — I  hear  her.  .  .  .  Oh,  Brown,  I  have  coals  of  fire  in  my  breast. 
It  surprises  me  that  the  human  heart  is  capable  of  so  much  misery." 

At  Naples  Keats  and  Severn  staid  at  the  Hotel  d'An- 
gleterre,  and  received  much  kindness  and  hospitality  from 
a  brother  of  Miss  Cotterill's  who  was  there  to  meet  her. 
The  political  state  and  servile  temper  of  the  people — 
though  they  were  living  just  then  under  the  constitutional 
forms  imposed  on  the  Bourbon  monarchy  by  the  revolu- 
tion of  the  previous  summer  —  grated  on  Keats's  liberal 
instincts,  and  it  was  the  sight  in  the  theatre  of  sentries 
actually  posted  on  the  stage  during  a  performance  that  one 
evening  determined  him  suddenly  to  leave  the  place.  He 
had  received  there  another  letter  from  Shelley,  who  since 
he  last  wrote  had  read  the  Lamia  volume,  and  was  full  of 
generous  admiration  for  Hyperion.  Shelley  now  warmly 
renewed  his  invitation  to  Keats  to  come  to  Pisa.  But  his 
and  Severn's  plans  were  fixed  for  Rome.  On  their  drive 
thither  (apparently  in  the  second  week  of  November)  Keats 
suffered  seriously  from  want  of  proper  food ;  but  he  was 
able  to  take  pleasure  in  the  beauty  of  the  land,  and  of  the 
autumn  flowers  which  Severn  gathered  for  him  by  the  way. 
Reaching  Rome,  they  settled  at  once  in  lodgings  which 
Mr.  (afterwards  Sir  James)  Clark  had  taken  for  them  in 
the  Piazza  di  Spagna,  in  the  first  house  on  the  right  going 
up  the  steps  to  Sta.  Trinita  dei  Monti.  Here,  according  to 
the  manner  of  those  days  in  Italy,  they  were  left  pretty 
much  to  shift  for  themselves.  Neither  could  speak  Ital- 
ian, and  at  first  they  were  ill  served  by  the  trattoria  from 
which  they  got  their  meals,  until  Keats  mended  matters 


202  KEATS.  [chap. 

by  one  day  coolly  emptying  all  the  dishes  out  of  window, 
and  handing  them  back  to  the  messenger — a  hint,  says 
Severn,  which  was  quickly  taken.  One  of  Severn's  first 
cares  was  to  get  a  piano,  since  nothing  soothed  Keats's 
pain  so  much  as  music.  For  a  while  the  patient  seemed 
better.  Dr.  Clark  wished  him  to  avoid  the  excitement  of 
seeing  the  famous  monuments  of  the  city,  so  he  left  Sev- 
ern to  visit  these  alone,  and  contented  himself  with  quiet 
strolls,  chiefly  on  the  Pincian  close  by.  The  season  was 
fine,  and  the  freshness  and  brightness  of  the  air,  says  Sev- 
ern, invariably  made  him  pleasant  and  witty.  In  Severn's 
absence  Keats  had  a  companion  he  liked  in  an  invalid, 
Lieutenant  Elton.  In  their  walks  on  the  Pincian  these 
two  often  met  the  famous  beauty  Pauline  Bonaparte,  Prin- 
cess Borghese.  Her  charms  were  by  this  time  failing — but 
not  for  lack  of  exercise ;  and  her  melting  glances  at  his 
companion,  who  was  tall  and  handsome,  presently  affect- 
ed Keats's  nerves,  and  made  them  change  the  direction  of 
their  walks.  Sometimes,  instead  of  walking,  they  would 
ride  a  little  way  on  horseback  while  Severn  was  working 
among  the  ruins. 

It  is  related  by  Severn  that  Keats  in  his  first  days  at 
Rome  began  reading  a  volume  of  Alfieri,  but  dropped  it  at 
the  words,  too  sadly  applicable  to  himself, 

"  Misera  me  !  sollievo  a  me  non  resta 
Altro  che  '1  piauto,  ed  il  pianio  e  deliito." 

Notwithstanding  signs  like  this,  his  mood  wTas  on  the  whole 
more  cheerful.  His  thoughts  even  turned  again  towards 
verse,  and  he  meditated  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  Sabrina. 
Severn  began  to  believe  he  would  get  well,  and  wrote  en- 
couragingly to  his  friends  in  England;  and  on  November 
30th  Keats  himself  wrote  to  Brown  in  a  strain  much  less 


vin.]  ROME.  203 

despondent  than  before.  But  suddenly  on  these  glimmer- 
ings of  hope  followed  despair.  On  December  10th  came 
a  relapse  which  left  no  doubt  of  the  issue.  Haemorrhage 
followed  haemorrhage  on  successive  days,  and  then  came  a 
period  of  violent  fever,  with  scenes  the  most  piteous  and 
distressing.  Keats  at  starting  had  confided  to  his  friend 
a  bottle  of  laudanum,  and  now  with  agonies  of  entreaty 
begged  to  have  it,  in  order  that  he  might  put  an  end  to 
his  misery ;  and  on  Severn's  refusal,  "  his  tender  appeal 
turned  to  despair,  with  all  the  power  of  his  ardent  imagi- 
nation and  bursting  heart."  It  was  no  unmanly  fear  of 
pain  in  Keats,  Severn  again  and  again  insists,  that  prompt- 
ed this  appeal,  but  above  all  his  acute  sympathetic  sense 
of  the  trials  which  the  sequel  would  bring  upon  his  friend. 
"  He  explained  to  me  the  exact  procedure  of  his  gradual 
dissolution,  enumerated  my  deprivations  and  toils,  and 
dwelt  upon  the  danger  to  my  life,  and  certainly  to  my  fort- 
une, of  my  continued  attendance  on  him."  Severn  gently 
persisting  in  refusal,  Keats  for  a  while  fiercely  refused  his 
friend's  ministrations,  until  presently  the  example  of  that 
friend's  patience  and  his  own  better  mind  made  him 
ashamed.  In  religion  Keats  had  been  neither  a  believer 
nor  a  scoffer,  respecting  Christianity  without  calling  him- 
self a  Christian,  and  by  turns  clinging  to  and  drifting 
from  the  doctrine  of  immortality.  Contrasting  now  the 
behaviour  of  the  believer  Severn  with  his  own,  he  acknowl- 
edged anew  the  power  of  the  Christian  teaching  and  ex- 
ample, and  bidding  Severn  read  to  him  from  Jeremy  Tay- 
lor's Holy  Living  and  Dying,  strove  to  pass  the  remainder 
of  his  days  in  a  temper  of  more  peace  and  constancy. 

By  degrees  the  tumult  of  his  soul  abated.  His  suffer- 
ings were  very  great,  partly  from  the  nature  of  the  disease 
itself,  partly  from  the  effect  of  the  disastrous  lowering  and 


204  KEATS.  [chap. 

starving  treatment  at  that  day  employed  to  combat  it. 
Shunned  and  neglected  as  the  sick  and  their  companions 
then  were  in  Italy,  the  friends  had  no  succour  except  from 
the  assiduous  kindness  of  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Clark,  with  occa- 
sional aid  from  a  stranger,  Mr.  Ewing.  At  one  moment, 
their  stock  of  money  having  run  out,  they  were  in  danger 
of  actual  destitution,  till  a  remittance  from  Mr.  Taylor 
arrived  just  in  time  to  save  them.  The  devotion  and  re 
source  of  Severn  were  infinite,  and  had  their  reward.  Oc- 
casionally there  came  times  of  delirium  or  half-delirium, 
when  the  dying  man  would  rave  wildly  of  his  miseries  and 
his  ruined  hopes,  till  his  companion  was  almost  exhausted 
with  "beating  about  in  the  tempest  of  his  mind;"  and 
once  and  again  some  fresh  remembrance  of  his  love,  or  the 
sight  of  her  handwriting  in  a  letter,  would  pierce  him  with 
too  intolerable  a  pang.  But  generally,  after  the  first  few 
weeks,  he  lay  quiet,  with  his  hand  clasped  on  a  white  cor- 
nelian, one  of  the  little  tokens  she  had  given  him  at  start- 
ing, while  his  companion  soothed  him  with  reading  or 
music.  His  favourite  reading  was  still  Jeremy  Taylor, 
and  the  sonatas  of  Haydn  were  the  music  he  liked  Severn 
best  to  play  to  him.  Of  recovery  he  would  not  hear,  but 
longed  for  nothing  except  the  peace  of  death,  and  had  even 
weaned,  or  all  but  weaned,  himself  from  thoughts  of  fame. 
"I  feel,"  he  said,  "the  flowers  growing  over  me;"  and  it 
seems  to  have  been  gently  and  without  bitterness  that  he 
gave  the  words  for  his  epitaph :  "  Here  lies  one  whose 
name  was  writ  in  water."  Ever  since  his  first  attack  at 
Wentworth  Place  he  had  been  used  to  speak  of  himself  as 
living  a  posthumous  life,  and  now  his  habitual  question  to 
the  doctor  when  he  came  in  was,  "  Doctor,  when  will  this 
posthumous  life  of  mine  come  to  an  end?"  As  he  turned 
to  ask  it  neither  physician  nor  friend  could  bear  the  pa- 


Yin.]  LAST  DAYS  AND  DEATH.  205 

thetic  expression  of  his  eyes,  at  all  times  of  extraordinary 
power,  and  now  burning  with  a  sad  and  piercing  unearthly 
brightness  in  his  wasted  cheeks.  Loveable  and  considerate 
to  the  last,  "  his  generous  concern  for  me,"  says  Severn, 
"in  my  isolated  position  at  Rome,  was  one  of  his  greatest 
cares."  His  response  to  kindness  was  irresistibly  winning, 
and  the  spirit  of  poetry  and  pleasantness  was  with  him  to 
the  end.  Severn  tells  how  in  watching  Keats  he  used 
sometimes  to  fall  asleep,  and  awakening,  find  they  were  in 
the  dark.  "  To  remedy  this,  one  night  I  tried  the  experi- 
ment of  fixing  a  thread  from  the  bottom  of  a  lighted  can- 
dle to  the  wick  of  an  unlighted  one,  that  the  flame  might 
be  conducted,  all  which  I  did  without  telling  Keats.  When 
he  awoke  and  found  the  first  candle  nearly  out,  he  was  re- 
luctant to  wake  me,  ancf  while  doubting  suddenly  cried  out, 
"  Severn,  Severn,  here's  a  little,,  fairy  lamplighter  actually 
lit  up  the  other  candle.'  "  And  again,  "  Poor  Keats  has 
me  ever  by  him,  and  shadows  out  the  form  of  one  solitary 
friend ;  he  opens  his  eyes  in  great  doubt  and  horror,  but 
when  they  fall  on  me  they  close  gently,  open  quietly  and 
close  again,  till  he  sinks  to  sleep." 

Such  tender  and  harrowing  memories  haunted  all  the 
after  life  of  the  watcher,  and  in  days  long  subsequent  it 
was  one  of  his  chief  occupations  to  write  them  down.  Life 
held  out  for  two  months  and  a  half  after  the  relapse,  but 
from  the  first  days  of  February  the  end  was  visibly  draw- 
ing near.  It  came  peacefully  at  last.  On  the  23d  of 
that  month,  writes  Severn,  "  about  four,  the  approaches  of 
death  came  on.  'Severn — I — lift  me  up — I  am  dying — 
I  shall  die  easy ;  don't  be  frightened — be  firm,  and  thank 
God  it  has  come.'  I  lifted  him  up  in  my  arms.  The 
phlegm  seemed  boiling  in  his  throat,  and  increased  until 
eleven,  when  he  gradually  sank  into  death,  so  quiet  that  I 


206  KEATS.  [chap.  viii. 

still  thought  he  slept."  Three  days  later  his  body  was 
carried,  attended  by  several  of  the  English  in  Rome  who 
had  heard  his  story,  to  its  grave  in  that  retired  and  verdant 
cemetery  which  for  his  sake  and  Shelley's  has  become  a 
place  of  pilgrimage  to  the  English  race  for  ever.  It  was 
but  the  other  day  that  the  remains  of  Severn  were  laid  in 
their  last  resting-place  beside  his  friend.1 

1  Severn,  as  most  readers  will  remember,  died  at  Rome  in  1879,  and 
his  remains  were,  in  1882,  removed  from  their  original  burying-place 
to  a  grave  beside  those  of  Keats  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  near  the 
pyramid  of  Caius  Sestius. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Character  and  Genius. 

The  touching  circumstances  of  Keats's  illness  and  death  at 
Rome  aroused,  naturally,  as  soon  as  they  were  known,  the 
sympathy  of  every  generous  mind.  Foremost,  as  all  the 
world  knows,  in  the  expression  of  that  sympathy  was  Shel- 
ley. He  had  been  misinformed  as  to  the  degree  in  which 
the  critics  had  contributed  to  Keats's  sufferings,  and  be- 
lieving that  they  had  killed  him,  was  full  both  of  righteous 
wrath  against  the  offenders  and  of  passionate  regret  for 
what  the  world  had  lost.  Under  the  stress  of  that  double 
inspiration  Shelley  wrote — 

"  And  a  whirlwind  of  music  came  sweet  from  the  spheres." 

As  an  utterance  of  abstract  pity  and  indignation,  Ado- 
na'is  is  unsurpassed  in  literature;  with  its  hurrying  train 
of  beautiful  spectral  images,  and  the  irresistible  current 
and  thrilling  modulation  of  its  verse,  it  is  perhaps  the  most 
perfect  and  sympathetic  effort  of  Shelley's  art ;  while  its 
strain  of  transcendental  consolationt  for  mortal  loss  con- 
tains the  most  lucid  exposition  of  his  philosophy.  But  of 
Keats  as  he  actually  lived  the  elegy  presents  no' feature, 
while  the  general  impression  it  conveys  of  his  character 
and  fate  is  erroneous.  A  similar  false  impression  was  at 
the  same  time  conveyed  to  a  circle  of  readers  incommeas- 
nrably  wider  than  that  reached  by  Shelley  in  the  well- 
10 


208  KEATS.  [chap. 

known  stanza  of  Don  Juan.  In  regard  to  Keats,  Byron 
tried  both  to  hunt  with  the  hounds  and  run  with  the  hare. 
"When  the  Edinburgh  praised  him  he  was  furious,  and  on 
receipt  of  the  Lamia  volume  wrote  with  vulgar  savagery  to 
Murray  :  "  No  more  Keats,  I  entreat — flay  him  alive ;  if 
some  of  you  don't,  I  must  skin  him  myself."  Then  after 
his  death,  hearing  that  it  had  been  caused  by  the  critics, 
he  turns  against  the  latter,  and  cries:  "I  would  not  be 
the  person  who  wrote  that  homicidal  article  for  all  the 
honour  and  glory  of  the  world."  In  the  Don  Juan  pas- 
sage he  contrived  to  have  his  fling  at  the  reviewers,  and  at 
the  weakness,  as  he  imagined  it,  of  their  victim  in  the 
same  breath. 

Taken  together  with  the  notion  of  "Johnny  Keats  "  to 
which  Blackwood  and  the  Quarterly  had  previously  given 
currency,  the  Adona'is  and  the  Don  Juan  passage  alike 
tended  to  fix  in  the  public  mind  an  impression  of  Keats's 
character  as  that  of  a  weakling  to  whom  the  breath  of  de- 
traction had  been  poison.  It  was  long  before  his  friends, 
who  knew  that  he  was  "  as  like  Johnny  Keats  as  the  Holy 
Ghost,"  did  anything  effectual  to  set  his  memory  right. 
Brown  had  been  bent  on  doing  so  from  the  first,  but  in 
the  end  wrote  only  the  brief  memoir,  still  in  manuscript, 
which  has  been  quoted  so  often  in  the  above  pages.  For 
anything  like  a  full  biography,  George  Keats  in  America 
could  alone  have  supplied  the  information ;  but  against 
him,  since  he  had  failed  to  send  help  to  his  poet-brother  in 
the  hour  of  need  (having  been  in  truth  simply  unable  to 
do  so),  Brown  had  unluckily  conceived  so  harsh  a  preju- 
dice that  friendly  communication  between  them  became 
impossible.  Neither  was  Dilke,  who  alone  among  Keats's 
friends  in  England  took  George's  part,  disposed,  under  the 
circumstances,  to  help  Brown  in  his  task.    For  a  longtime 


IX.]  CHARACTER  AND  GENIUS.  209 

George  himself  hoped  to  superintend  and  supply  materials 
for  aTlife  of  his  brother,  but  partly  his  want  of  literary  ex- 
perience, and  partly  the  difficulty  of  leaving  his  occupations 
in  the  West,  prevented  him.  Mr.  Taylor,  the  publisher, 
also  at  one  time  wished  to  be  Keats's  biographer,  and  with 
the  help  of  Woodhouse  collected  materials  for  the  pur- 
pose, but  in  the  end  failed  to  use  them.  The  same  wish 
was  entertained  by  John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  whose  litera- 
ry skill  and  fine  judgment  and  delicacy  should  have  made 
him,  of  all  the  poet's  friends,  the  most  competent  for  the 
work.  But  of  these  many  projects  not  one  had  been  car- 
vied  out  when,  five-and-twenty  years  after  Keats's  death,  a 
younger  man,  who  had  never  seen  him,  took  up  the  task— 
the  Monckton  Milnes  of  those  days,  the  Lord  Houghton 
freshly  remembered  by  us  all— and  with  help  from  nearly 
all  Keats's  surviving  friends,  and  by  the  grace  of  his  own 
genial  and  sympathetic  temper,  set  the  memory  of  the  poet 
in  its  true  light  in  the  beautiful  and  moving  book  with 
which  every  student  is  familiar. 

Keats  had,  indeed,  enemies  within  his  house,  apart  (if  the 
separation  can  with  truth  be  made)  from  the  secret  pres- 
ence of  that  worst  enemy  of  all,  inherited  disease,  which 
killed  him.  He  had  a  nature  all  tingling  with  pride  and 
sensitiveness;  he  had  the  perilous  capacity  and  appetite 
for  pleasure  to  which  he  owns  when  he  speaks  of  his  own 
"  exquisite  sense  of  the  luxurious ;"  and  with  it  the  be- 
setting tendency  to  self- torment  which  he  describes  as 
his  "  horrid  morbidity  of  temperament."  The  greater  his 
credit  that  on  the  one  hand  he  gave  way  so  little  to  self- 
indulgence,  and  that,  on  the  other,  he  battled  so  bravely 
with  the  spirits  that  plagued  him.  To  the  bridle  thus  put 
on  himself  he  alludes  in  his  unaffected  way  when  he  speaks 
of  the  "  violence  of  his  temperament,  continually  smoth- 


210  KEATS.  [chap. 

ered  up."  Left  fatherless  at  eight,  motherless  at  fifteen, 
and  subject,  during  the  forming  years  of  his  life  which 
followed,  to  no  other  discipline  but  that  of  apprenticeship 
in  a  suburban  surgery,  he  showed  in  his  life  such  generos- 
ity, modesty,  humour,  and  self-knowledge,  such  a  spirit  of 
conduct  and  degree  of  self-control,  as  would  have  done 
honour  to  one  infinitely  better  trained  and  less  hardly 
tried.  His  hold  over  himself  gave  way,  indeed,  under  tho 
stress  of  passion,  and  as  a  lover  he  betrays  all  the  weak 
places  of  his  nature.  But  we  must  remember  his  state  of 
health  when  the  passion  seized,  and  the  worse  state  into 
which  it  quickly  threw,  him,  as  well  as  the  lack  there  was 
in  her  who  caused  it — not,  indeed,  so  far  as  we  can  judge, 
of  kindness  and  loyalty,  but  certainly,  it  would  seem,  of 
the  woman's  finer  genius  of  tact  and  tenderness.  Under 
another  kind  of  trial,  when  the  work  he  offered  to  the 
world,  in  all  soberness  of  self-judgment  and  of  hope,  was 
thrust  back  upon  him  with  gibes  and  insult,  he  bore  him- 
self with  true  dignity ;  and  if  the  practical  consequences 
preyed  upon  his  mind,  it  was  not  more  than  reason  and 
the  state  of  his  fortunes  justified. 

In  all  ordinary  relations  of  life  his  character  was  con- 
spicuous alike  for  manly  spirit  and  sweetness.  No  man 
who  ever  lived  has  inspired  in  his  friends  a  deeper  or 
more  devoted  affection.  One,  of  whose  name  we  have 
heard  little  in  this  history,1  wrote  while  the  poet  lay  dy- 
ing :  "  Keats  must  get  himself  again,  Severn,  if  but  for 
me — I  cannot  afford  to  lose  him ;  if  I  know  what  it  is  to 
love,  I  truly  love  John  Keats."  The  following  is  from  a 
letter  of  Brown,  written  also  during  his  illness>-  "He  is 
present  to  me  everywhere  and  at  all  times — he  now  seems 
sitting  here  at  my  side,  and  looking  hard  into  my  face.  .  ■>  * 
1  Haslam,  in  Severn  MSS. 


ix.]  CHARACTER  AND  GENIUS.  211 

So  much  as  I  have  loved  him,  I  never  knew  how  closely 
he  was  wound  about  my  heart."  *  Elsewhere,  speaking  of 
the  time  of  his  first  attack,  Brown  says :  "  While  I  waited 
on  him,  his  instinctive  generosity,  his  acceptance  of  my  of- 
fices, by  a  glance  of  his  eye  or  motion  of  his  hand,  made 
me  regard  my  mechanical  duty  as  absolutely  nothing  com- 
pared to  his  silent  acknowledgment.  Something  like  this 
Severn,  his  last  nurse,  observed  to  me ;" 2  and  we  know  in 
fact  how  the  whole  life  of  Severn,  prolonged  nearly  sixty 
years  after  his  friend's  death,  was  coloured  by  the  light  re- 
flected from  his  memory.  When  Lord  Houghton's  book 
came  out,  in  1848,  Archdeacon  Bailey  wrote  from  Ceylon 
to  thank  the  writer  for  doing  merited  honour  to  one 
"  whose  genius  I  did  not,  and  do  not,  more  fully  admire 
than  I  entirely  loved  the  Man."3  The  points  on  which 
all  who  knew  him  especially  dwell  are  two  :  First,  his  high 
good  sense  and  spirit  of  honour ;  as  to  which  let  one  wit- 
ness stand  for  many.  "He  had  a  soul  of  noble  integrity," 
says  Bailey,  "  and  his  common  sense  was  a  conspicuous 
part  of  his  character.  Indeed  his  character  was,  in  the 
best  sense,  manly."  Next,  his  beautiful  unselfishness  and 
warmth  of  sympathy.  This  is  the  rarest  quality  of  gen- 
ius, which  from  the  very  intensity  of  its  own  life  and  oc- 
cupations is  apt  to  be  self-absorbed,  requiting  the  devotion 
it  receives  with  charm,  which  costs  it  nothing — but  with 
charm  only — and  when  the  trial  comes,  refusing  to  friend- 
ship any  real  sacrifice  of  its  own  objects  or  inclinations. 
But  when  genius  to  charm  adds  true  unselfishness,  and  is 
ready  to  throw  all  the  ardour  of  its  own  life  into  the  cares 
and  interests  of  those  about  it,  then  we  have  what  in  hu- 
man nature  is  most  worthy  of  love.     And  this  is  what  his 

1  Severn  MSS.  2  Hou-hton  MSS.  3  Ibid. 


212  KEATS.  [chap. 

companions  found  in  Keats.  "He  was  the  sincerest 
friend,"  cries  Reynolds,  "  the  most  lovable  associate— the 
deepest  listener  to  the  griefs  and  distresses  of  all  around 
him— 'that  ever  lived  in  this  tide  of  times."1  To  the 
same  effect  Haydon :  "  He  was  the  most  unselfish  of  hu- 
man creatures ;  unadapted  to  this  world,  he  cared  not  for 
himself,  and  put  himself  to  any  inconvenience  for  the  sake 
of  his  friends.  ...  He  had  a  kind,  gentle  heart,  and  would 
have  shared  his  fortune  with  any  one  who  wanted  it." 
And  again  Bailey  : 

"  With  his  friends,  a  sweeter  tempered  man  I  never  knew  than  was 
John  Keats.  Gentleness  was  indeed  his  proper  characteristic,  without 
one  particle  of  dullness,  or  insipidity,  or  want  of  spirit.  ...  In  his 
letters  he  talks  of  suspecting  everybody.  It  appeared  not  in  his  con- 
versation. On  the  contrary,  he  was  uniformly  the  apologist  for  poor 
frail  human  nature,  and  allowed  for  people's  faults  more  than  any 
man  I  ever  knew,  and  especially  for  the  faults  of  his  friends.  But 
if  any  act  of  wrong  or  oppression,  of  fraud  or  falsehood,  was  the  top- 
ic, he  rose  into  sudden  and  animated  indignation."2 

Lastly,  "He  had  no  fears  of  self,"  says  George  Keats; 
"  through  interference  in  the  quarrels  of  others,  he  would 
at  all  hazards,  and  without  calculating  his  powers  to  de- 
fend, or  his  reward  for  the  deed,  defend  the  oppressed  and 
distressed  with  heart  and  soul,  with  hand  and  purse." 

In  this  chorus  of  admiring  affection  Haydon  alone  must 
assert  his  own  superiority  by  mixing  depreciation  with 
praise.  When  he  laments  over  Keats's  dissipations  he  ex- 
aggerates, there  is  evidence  enough  to  show,  idly  and  ca- 
lumniously.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  he  speaks  of  the 
poet's  "  want  of  decision  of  character  and  power  of  will," 
and  says  that  "never  for  two  days  did  he  know  his  own 

1  Houghton  MSS.  2  fifa 


ix.]  CHARACTER  AND  GEXIUS.  213 

intentions,"  his  criticism  is  deserving  of  more  attention. 
This  is  only  Haydon's  way  of  describing  a  fact  in  Keats's 
nature  of  which  no  one  was  better  aware  than  himself. 
He  acknowledges  his  own  "  unsteady  and  vagarish  dispo- 
sition." What  he  means  is  no  weakness  of  instinct  or 
principle  affecting  the  springs  of  conduct  in  regard  to  oth- 
ers, but  a  liability  to  veerings  of  opinion  and  purpose  in 
regard  to  himself.  "  The  Celtic  instability  "  a  reader  may 
perhaps  surmise  who  adopts  that  hypothesis  as  to  the 
poet's  descent.  Whether  the  quality  was  one  of  race  or 
not,  it  was  probably  inseparable  from  the  peculiar  com- 
plexion of  Keats's  genius.  Or  rather  it  was  an  expression 
in  character  of  that  which  was  the  very  essence  of  that 
genius,  the  predominance,  namely,  of  the  sympathetic  im- 
agination over  every  other  faculty.  Acute  as  was  his  own 
emotional  life,  he  nevertheless  belonged  essentially  to  the 
order  of  poets  whose  work  is  inspired,  not  mainly  by  their 
own  personality,  but  by  the  world  of  things  and  men  out- 
side them.  He  realised  clearly  the  nature  of  his  own  gift, 
and  the  degree  to  which  susceptibility  to  external  impres- 
sions was  apt  to  overpower  in  him — not  practical  consist- 
ency only,  but  even  the  sense  of  a  personal  identity. 

"As  to  the  poetic  character  itself,"  he  writes,  "(I  mean  that  sort 
of  which,  if  I  am  anything,  I  am  a  member;  that  sort  distinguished 
from  the  AVordsworthian,  or  egotistical  sublime;  which  is  athing/w 
se,  and  stands  alone),  it  is  not  itself — it  has  no  self — it  is  everything 
and  nothing — it  has  no  character — it  enjoys  light  and  shade — it  lives 
in  gusto,  be  it  foul  or  fair,  high  or  low,  rich  or  poor,  mean  or  elevated 
— it  has  as  much  delight  in  conceiving  an  Iago  as  an  Imogen.  A 
poet  is  the  most  unpoetical  of  anything  in  existence,  because  he  has 
no  identity ;  he  is  continually  in  for,  and  filling,  some  other  body.  . . . 
If,  then,  he  has  no  self,  and  if  I  am  a  poet,  where  is  the  wonder  that 
I  should  say  I  woTtld  write  no  more  ?  Might  I  not  at  that  very  in- 
stant have  been  cogitating  on  the  characters  of  Saturn  and  Ops  ?     It 


214  KEATS.  [chap. 

is  a  wretched  thing  to  confess,  but  it  is  a  very  fact,  that  not  one 
word  I  ever  utter  can  be  taken  for  granted  as  an  opinion  growing  out 
of  my  identical  nature." 

"  Even  now,"  he  says,  on  another  occasion,  "  I  am  per- 
haps not  speaking  from  myself,  but  from  some  character 
in  whose  soul  I  now  live."  Keats  was  often  impatient  of 
this  Protean  quality  of  his  own  mind.  "I  would  call  the 
head  and  top  of  those  who  have  a  proper  self,"  he  says, 
"men  of  power;"  and  it  is  the  men  of  power,  the  men  of 
trenchant  individuality  and  settled  aims,  that  in  the  sphere 
of  practical  life  he  most  admires.  But  in  the  sphere  of 
thought  and  imagination  his  preference  is  dictated  by  the 
instinctive  bent  of  his  own  genius.  In  that  sphere  he  is 
impatient,  in  turn,  of  all  intellectual  narrowness,  and  will 
not  allow  that  poetry  should  make  itself  the  exponent  of 
any  single  creed  or  given  philosophy.  Thus,  in  speaking 
of  what  he  thinks  too  doctrinal  and  pedagogic  in  the  work 
of  Wordsworth — 

"For  the  sake,"  he  asks,  "of  a  few  fine  imaginative  or  domestic 
passages,  are  we  to  be  bullied  into  a  certain  philosophy  engendered 
in  the  whims  of  an  egotist  ?  Every  man  has  his  speculations,  but 
every  man  does  not  brood  and  peacock  over  them  till  he  makes  a 
false  coinage  and  deceives  himself.  Many  a  man  can  travel  to  the 
very  bourne  of  Heaven,  and  yet  want  confidence  to  put  down  his  half- 
seeing.  ...  We  hate  poetry  that  has  a  palpable  design  upon  us,  and, 
if  Ave  do  not  agree,  seems  to  put  its  hand  into  its  breeches  pocket. 
Poetry  should  be  great  and  unobtrusive — a  thing  which  enters  into 
one's  soul." 

This  is  but  one  of  many  passages  in  which  Keats  pro- 
claims the  necessity,  for  a  poet,  of  an  all-embracing  recep- 
tivity and  openness  of  mind.  His  critics  sometimes  speak 
as  if  his  aim  had  been  merely  to  create  a  paradise  of  art 
and  beauty  remote  from  the   cares  and  interests  of  the 


ix.]  CHARACTER  AND  GENIUS.  215 

world.  If  the  foregoing  pages  have  been  written  to  any 
purpose,  the  reader  will  be  aware  that  no  criticism  can  be 
more  mistaken.  At  the  creation,  the  revelation,  of  beauty 
Keats  aimed  indeed  invariably,  but  of  beauty,  wherever  its 
elements  existed — "  I  have  loved,"  as  he  says,  "  the  prin- 
ciple of  beauty  in  all  things."  His  conception  of  the 
kingdom  of  poetry  was  Shakspearean,  including  the  whole 
range  of  life  and  imagination,  every  affection  of  the  soul 
and  every  speculation  of  the  mind.  Of  that  kingdom  he 
lived  long  enough  to  enter  on  and  possess  certain  provinces 
only — those  that,  by  their  manifest  and  prevailing  charm, 
first  and  most  naturally  allure  the  spirit  of  youth.  Would 
he  have  been  able  to  make  the  rest  also  his  own  ?  Would 
the  faculties  that  were  so  swift  to  reveal  the  hidden  de- 
lights of  nature,  to  divine  the  true  spirit  of  antiquity,  to 
conjure  with  the  spell  of  the  Middle  Age  —  would  they 
with  time  have  gained  equal  power  to  unlock  the  myste- 
ries of  the  heart,  and  still,  in  obedience  to  the  law  of  beau- 
ty, to  illuminate  and  harmonise  the  great  struggles  and 
problems  of  human  life? 

My  belief  is  that  such  power  they  would  not  have  failed 
to  gain.  From  the  height  to  which  the  genius  of  Keats 
arose  during  the  brief  period  between  its  first  effervescence 
and  its  exhaustion — from  the  glowing  humanity  of  his  own 
nature,  and  the  completeness  with  which,  by  the  testimony 
alike  of  his  own  consciousness  and  his  friends'  experience, 
he  was  accustomed  to  live  in  the  lives  of  others — from  the 
gleams  of  true  greatness  of  mind  which  shine  not  only  in 
his  poetry,  but  equally  amid  the  gossip  and  pleasantry  of 
his  familiar  letters — from  all  our  evidences,  in  a  word,  as 
to  what  he  was  as  well  as  from  what  he  did — I  think  it 
probable  that  by  power,  as  well  as  by  temperament  and 
aim,  he  was  the  most  Shakspearean  spirit  that  has  lived 
10*       v 


216  KEATS.  [chap. 

since  Shakspeare ;  the  true  Marcellus,  as  his  first  biographer 
has  called  him,  of  the  realm  of  English  song ;  and  that  in 
his  premature  death  our  literature  has  sustained  its  great- 
est loss.  Something  like  this,  it  would  seem,  is  also  the 
opinion  of  his  foremost  now  living  successors — as  Lord 
Tennyson,  Mr.  Browning,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold.  Others 
have  formed  a  different  judgment,  but  among  those  unfort- 
unate guests  at  the  banquet  of  life — the  poets  called  away 
before  their  time  —  who  can  really  adjudge  the  honours 
that  would  have  been  due  had  they  remained  ?  In  a  final 
estimate  of  any  writer's  work  we  must  take  into  account 
not  what  he  might  have  done,  but  only  what  he  did.  And 
in  the  work  actually  left  by  Keats,  the  master-chord  of 
humanity,  we  shall  admit,  had  not  yet  been  struck  with 
fulness.  When  we  sum  up  in  our  minds  the  total  effect 
of  his  poetry  we  can  think,  indeed,  of  the  pathos  of  Isabel- 
la, but  of  that  alone,  as  equally  powerful  in  its  kind  with 
the  nature-magic  of  the  Hymn  to  Pan  and  the  Ode  to  a 
Nightingale,  with  the  glow  of  romance  colour  in  St.  Ag- 
nes's  Eve,  the  weirdness  of  romance  sentiment  in  La  Belle 
Dame  sans  Merci,  the  conflict  of  elemental  force  with  fate 
in  Hyperion,  the  revelations  of  the  soul  of  ancient  life  and 
art  in  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn,  and  the  fragment  of  an 
Ode  to  Mala. 

It  remains  to  glance  at  the  influence  exercised  by  Keats 
on  the  poets  who  have  come  after  him.  In  two  ways, 
chiefly,  I  should  say,  has  that  influence  been  operative. 
First,  on  the  subject-matter  of  poetry:  in  kindling  and 
informing  in  other  souls  the  poetic  love  of  nature  for  her 
own  sake,  and  also,  in  equal  degrees,  the  love  both  of 
classic  fable  and  of  romance.  And  secondly,  on  its  form : 
in  setting  before  poets  a  certain  standard  of  execution — a 
standard  not  of  technical  correctness,  for  which  Keats  nev- 


IX.]  CHARACTER  AND  GENIUS.  217 

er  cared  sufficiently,  but  of  that  quality  to  which  he  him- 
self refers  when  he  speaks  of  "  loading  every  rift  of  a  sub- 
ject with  ore."  We  may  define  it  as  the  endeavour  after 
a  continual  positive  poetic  richness  and  felicity  of  phrase. 
A  typical  instance  is  to  be  found  in  the  lines  already  quoted 
that  tell  us  of  the  trembling  hopes  of  Madeline— 

"  But  to  her  heart  her  heart  was  voluble, 
Paining  with  eloquence  her  balmy  side." 

The  beauty  of  such  a  phrase  is  no  mere  beauty  of  fancy 
or  of  sound ;  it  is  the  beauty  which  resides  in  truth  only, 
every  word  being  chosen  and  every  touch  laid  by  a  vital 
exercise  of  the  imagination.  The  first  line  describes  in 
perfection  the  duality  of  consciousness  in  such  a  moment 
of  suspense,  the  second  makes  us  realise  at  once  the  phys- 
ical effect  of  the  emotion  on  the  heroine,  and  the  spell  of 
her  imagined  presence  on  ourselves.  In  so  far  as  Keats 
has  taught  other  poets  really  to  write  like  this,  his  influ- 
ence has  been  wholly  to  their  advantage— but  not  so  when 
for  this  quality  they  give  us  only  its  simulacrum,  in  the 
shape  of  brilliancies  merely  verbal  and  a  glitter  not  of  gold. 
The  first  considerable  writer  among  Keats's  successors  on 
whom  his  example  took  effect  was  Hood,  in  the  fairy  and 
romance  poems  of  his  earlier  time.  The  dominant  poet  of 
the  Victorian  age,  Tennyson,  has  been  profoundly  influ- 
enced by  it  both  in  the  form  and  the  matter  of  his  art, 
and  is  indeed  the  heir  of  Keats  and  of  Wordsworth  in 
almost  equal  degrees.  After  or  together  with  Coleridge, 
Keats  has  also  contributed  most,  among  English  writers, 
to  the  poetic  method  and  ideals  of  Rossetti  and  his  group. 
Himself,  as  we  have  seen,  alike  by  gifts  and  training  a 
true  child  of  the  Elizabethans,  he  thus  stands  in  the  most 
direct  line  of  descent  between  the  great  poets  of  that  age 


218  KEATS.  [chap.  ix. 

and  those,  whom  posterity  has  yet  to  estimate,  of  our  own 
day. 

Such,  I  think,  is  Keats's  historic  place  in  English  litera- 
ture. What  his  place  was  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  best 
knew  him,  we  have  just  learned  from  their  own  lips.  The 
days  of  the  years  of  his  life  were  few  and  evil,  but  above 
his  grave  the  double  aureole  of  poetry  and  friendship  shines 
immortally. 


APPENDIX. 


Pa^e  2  note  1.— As  to  the  exact  date  of  Keats's  birth  the  evidence 
is  conflicting  He  was  christened  at  St.  Botolph's,  Bishopsgate,  Dec. 
18  1795,  and  on  the  margin  of  the  entry  in  the  baptismal  register 
(which  I  am  informed  is  in  the  handwriting  of  the  rector,  Dr.  Cony- 
beare)  is  a  note  stating  that  he  was  born  Oct.  31st.  The  date  is  given 
accordingly  without  question  by  Mr.  Buxton  Forman  ( Works,  vol.  i., 
n  xlviii)  But  it  seems  certain  that  Keats  himself  and  his  family 
believed  his  birthday  to  have  been  Oct.  29th.  Writing  on  that  day  in 
1818  Keats  says,  "  this  is  my  birthday."  Brown  (in  Houghton  MSS.) 
gives  the  same  day,  but  only  as  on  hearsay  from  a  lady  to  whom 
Keats  had  mentioned  it,  and  with  a  mistake  as  to  the  year.  Lastly, 
in  the  proceedings  in  Rawlmgs  v.  Jennings,  Oct  29th  is  again  given  as 
his  birthday,  in  the  affidavit  of  one  Anne  Birch,  who  swears  that  she 
knew  his  father  and  mother  intimately.  The  entry  in  the  St.  Bo- 
tolph's register  is  probably  the  authority  to  be  preferred.— Lower 
Moorfields  was  the  space  now  occupied  by  Finsbury  Circus  and  the 
London  Institution,  together  with  the  east  side  of  Finsbury  Fave- 
ment  —The  births  of  the  younger  brothers  are  in  my  text  given 
ricrhtly  for  the  first  time,  from  the  parish  registers  of  St.  Leonard  s, 
Shoreditch,  where  they  were  all  three  christened  in  a  batch  on  Sept. 
24  1801     The  family  were  at  that  date  living  m  Craven  Street 

P  2  note  2  —Brown  (Houghton  MSS.)  says  simply  that  Thomas 
Keats  'was  a  "native  of  Devon."  His  daughter,  Mrs  Llanos,  tells  me 
she  remembers  hearing  as  a  child  that  he  came  from  the  Lands 
End      Persons  of  the  name  are  still  living  m  Plymouth. 

P  5  note  2  —The  total  amount  of  the  funds  paid  into  Court  by 
the  'executors  under  Mr.  Jennings's  will  (see  Preface,  p.  til)  was 
-PI  ^  1  fiO  19s   hd 

P  10  note  Land  p.  70,  note  1.— Of  the  total  last  mentioned,  there 
came  to  the  widow  first  and  last  (partly  by  reversion  from  other  leg- 
atees who  predeceased  her)  sums  amounting  to  £9343  2s  In  the 
Chancery  proceedings  the  precise  terms  of  the  deed  executed  by  Mrs 
Jennings  for  the  benefit  of  her  grandchildren  are  not  quoted,  but 
only  its° general  purport;  whence  it  appears  that  the  sum  she  made 
over  to  Messrs.  Sandell  and  Abbey  in  trust  for  them  amounted  ap- 
proximately to  £8000,  and  included  all  the  reversions  fallen  or  still 
to  fall  in  as  above  mentioned.  The  balance,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  she 
retained  for  her  own  support  (she  being  then  seventy-four). 


220    -  KEATS. 

P.  16,  note  1. — The  following  letter  written  by  Mr.  Abbey  to  Mr. 
Taylor  the  publisher,  under  date  April  18,  1821,  soon  after  the  news 
of  Keats's  death  reached  England,  speaks  for  itself.  The  letter  is 
from  Woodhouse  MSS.  B. 

"Sir, 

I  beg  pardon  for  not  replying  to  your  favor  of  the  30th  ult.  re- 
specting the  late  Mr.  Juo.  Keats. 

"I  am  obliged  by  your  note,  but  he  having  withdrawn  himself  from  my 
controul,  and  acted  contrary  to  my  advice,  I  cannot  interfere  with  his  affairs. 

"I  am, Sir, 

"Yr.  mo.  Hble  St., 

"KlOUD.  AlJBKY." 

P.  33,  note  1. — The  difficulty  of  determining  the  exact  date  and 
place  of  Keats's  first  introduction  to  Hunt  arises  as  follows :  Cow- 
den  Clarke  states  plainly  and  circumstantially  that  it  took  place  in 
Leigh  Hunt's  cottage  at  Hampstead.  Hunt  in  his  Autobiography 
says  it  was  "in  the  spring  of  the  year  1S16"  that  he  went  to  live 
at  Hampstead  in  the  cottage  in  question.  Putting  these  two  state- 
ments together,  we  get  the  result  stated  as  probable  in  the  text.  But 
on  the  other  hand  there  is  the  strongly  Huntian  character  of  Keats's 
Epistle  to  G.  F.  Mathew,  dated  November,  1815,  which  would  seem  to 
indicate  an  earlier  acquaintance  (see  p.  30).  Unluckily  Leigh  Hunt 
himself  has  darkened  counsel  on  the  point  by  a  paragraph  inserted 
in  the  last  edition  of  his  Autobiography,  as  follows  (Pref.  no.  7,  p. 
257) :  "  It  was  not  at  Hampstead  that  I  first  saw  Keats.  It  was  at 
York  Buildings,  in  the  New  Road  (No.  8),  where  I  wrote  part  of  the 
Indicator,  and  he  resided  with  me  while  in  Mortimer  Street,  Kentish 
Town  (No.  13),  where  I  concluded  it.  I  mention  this  for  the  curious 
in  such  things,  among  whom  I  am  one."  The  student  must  not  be 
misled  by  this  remark  of  Hunt's,  which  is  evidently  only  due  to  a 
slip  of  memory.  It  is  quite  true  that  Keats  lived  with  Hunt  in 
Mortimer  Street,  Kentish  Town,  during  part  of  July  and  August, 
1820  (see  page  195),  and  that  before  moving  to  that  address  Hunt 
had  lived  for  more  than  a  year  (from  the  autumn  of  1818  to  the 
spring  of  1820)  at  8  New  Road.  But  that  Keats  was  intimate  with 
him  two  years  and  a  half  earlier,  when  he  was  in  fact  living  not  in 
London  at  all  but  at  the  Yale  of  Health,  is  abundantly  certain. 

P.  37,  note  1. — Cowden  Clarke  tells  how  Keats,  once  calling  and 
finding  him  fallen  asleep  over  Chaucer,  wrote  on  the  blank  space 
at  the  end  of  the  Floure  and  the  Leafe  the  sonnet  beginning  "  This 
pleasant  tale  is  like  a  little  copse."  Reynolds  on  reading  it  ad- 
dressed to  Keats  the  following  sonnet  of  his  own,  which  is  unpub- 
lished (Houghton  MSS.),  and  has  a  certain  biographical  interest.  It 
is  dated  Feb.  27, 1817: 

"Thy  thoughts,  dear  Keats,  are  like  fresh-gathered  leaves, 
Or  white  flowers  pluck'd  from  some  sweet  lily  bed  ; 
They  set  the  heart  a-breathing,  and  they  shed 

The  glow  of  meadows,  mornings,  and  spring  eves 

O'er  the  excited  soul.— Thy  genius  weaves 


APPENDIX.  221 

Songs  that  shall  make  the  age  he  nature-led, 

And  win  that  coronal  for  thy  young  head 
Which  time's  strange  [qy.  strong?]  hand  of  freshness  ne'er  bereaves. 
Go  on  !  and  keep  thee  to  thine  own  green  way, 

Singing  in  that  same  key  which  Chaucer  sung ; 
Be  thou  companion  of  the  summer  day, 

Roaming  the  fields  and  older  woods  among: 
So  shall  thy  muse  be  ever  in  her  Ma)', 

And  thy  luxuriant  spirit  ever  young." 

P.  44,  note  1. — Woodhouse  MSS.  A  contains  the  text  of  the  first 
draft  in  question,  with  some  preliminary  words  of  Woodhouse  as 
follows : 

"The  lines  at  p.  36  of  Keats's  printed  poems  are  altered  from  a 
copy  of  verses  written  by  K.  at  the  request  of  his  brother  George, 
and  by  the  latter  sent  as  a  valentine  to  the  lady.  The  following  is  a 
copy  of  the  lines  as  originally  written  : 

"  '  Hadst  thou  lived  in  days  of  old, 
Oh  what  wonders  had  been  told 
Of  thy  lively  dimpled  face, 
And  thy  footsteps  full  of  grace : 
Of  thy  hair's  luxurious  darkling, 
Of  thine  eyes'  expressive  sparkling, 
And  thy  voice's  swelling  rapture, 
Taking  hearts  a  ready  capture. 
Oh !  if  thou  hadst  breathed  then, 
Thon  hadst  made  the  Muses  ten. 
Could'st  thou  wish  for  lineage  higher 
Than  twin  sister  of  Thalia? 
At  least  for  ever,  ever  more 
Will  I  call  the  Graces  four.'  " 

Here  follow  lines  41-68  of  the  poem  as  afterwards  published; 
and  in  conclusion — 

"Ah  me  !  whither  shall  I  flee? 
Thou  hast  metamorphosed  me. 
Do  not  let  me  sigh  and  pine, 
Prythee  be  my  valentine. 

"  14  Feby.,  1816." 

P.  47,  note  1. — Mrs.  Procter's  memory,  however,  betrayed  her  when 
she  informed  Lord  Houghton  that  the  colour  of  Keats's  eyes  was 
blue.  That  they  were  pure  hazel-brown  is  certain,  from  the  evidence 
alike  of  C.  C.  Clarke,  of  George  Keats  and  his  wife  (as  transmitted 
by  their  daughter  Mrs.  Speed  to  her  son),  and  from  the  various  por^ 
traits  painted  from  life  and  posthumously  by  Severn  and  Hilton. 
Mrs.  Procter  calls  his  hair  auburn  ;  Mrs.  Speed  had  heard  from  hex- 
father  and  mother  that  it  was  "  golden  red,"  which  may  mean  nearly 
the  same  thing ;  I  have  seen  a  lock  in  the  possession  of  Sir  Charles 
Dilke,  and  should  rather  call  it  a  warm  brown,  likely  to  have  looked 
gold  in  the  lights.  Bailey  in  Houghton  MSS.  speaks  of  it  as  extraor- 
dinarily thick  and  curly,  and  says  that  to  lay  your  hand  on  his  head 
was  like  laying  it  "  on  the  rich  plumage  of  a  bird."  An  evidently 
misleading  description  of  Keats's  general  aspect  is  that  of  Coleridge, 
when  he  describes  him  as  a  "  loose,  slack,  not  well-dressed  youth." 


222  KEATS. 

The  sage  must  have  been  drawing  from  his  inward  eye,  those  inti- 
mate with  Keats  being  of  one  accord  as  to  his  appearance  of  trim 
strength  and  "fine  compactness  of  person."  Coleridge's  further 
mention  of  his  hand  as  shrunken  and  old-looking  seems  exact. 

P.  78,  note  1. — The  isolated  expressions  of  Keats  on  this  subject, 
which  alone  have  been  hitherto  published,  have  exposed  him  some- 
what unjustly  to  the  charge  of  petulance  and  morbid  suspicion. 
Fairness  seems  to  require  that  the  whole  passage  in  which  he  deals 
with  it  should  be  given.  The  passage  occurs  in  a  letter  to  Bailey 
written  from  Hampstead  and  dated  Oct.  8,  1817,  of  which  only  a 
fragment  was  printed  by  Lord  Houghton,  and  after  him  by  Mr.  Bux- 
ton Forman  (Works,  vol.  iii.,  p.  82,  no.  xvi.): 

"I  went  to  Hunt's  and  Haydon's,  who  live  now  neighbours. — 
Shelley  was  there — I  know  nothing  about  anything  in  this  part  of 
the  world— every  Body  seems  at  Loggerheads.  There's  Hunt  infat- 
uated— there's  Haydon's  picture  in  statu  quo — There's  Hunt  walks 
up  and  down  his  painting-room  criticising  every  head  most  unmerci- 
fully— There's  Horace  Smith  tired  of  Hunt — '  The  Web  of  our  life 
is  of  mingled  yarn.'  ...  I  am  quite  disgusted  with  literary  men,  and 
will  never  know  another  except  Wordsworth — no  not  even  Byron. 
Here  is  an  instance  of  the  friendship  of  such.  Haydoh  and  Hunt 
have  known  each  other  many  years — now  they  live,  pour  ainsi  dire, 
jealous  neighbours.  Haydon  says  to  me,  Keats,  don't  show  your 
lines  to  Hunt  on  any  account,  or  he  will  have  done  half  for  you — so 
it  appears  Hunt  wishes  it  to  be  thought.  When  he  met  Reynolds  in 
the  Theatre,  John  told  him  I  was  getting  on  to  the  completion  of 
4000  lines — Ah  !  says  Hunt,  had  it  not  been  for  me  they  would  have 
been  7000  !  If  he  will  say  this  to  Reynolds,  what  would  he  to  other 
people  ?  Haydon  received  a  Letter  a  little  while  back  on  the  subject 
from  some  Lady,  which  contains  a  caution  to  me,  thro'  him,  on  this 
subject.     Now  is  not  all  this  a  most  paultry  thing  to  think  about?" 

P.  82,  note  1. — See  Haydon,  Autobiography,  vol.  i.,  pp.  38-4-5.  The 
letter  containing  Keats's  account  of  the  same  entertainment  was 
printed  for  the  first  time  by  Speed,  Works,  vol.  i.,  p.  i.,  no.  1,  where  it 
is  dated  merely  "  Featherstone  Buildings,  Monday."  (At  Feather- 
stone  Buildings  lived  the  family  of  Charles  Wells.)  In  Houghton 
MSS.  I  find  a  transcript  of  the  same  letter  in  the  hand  of  Mr.  Coven- 
try Patmore,  with  a  note  in  Lord  Houghton's  hand :  "  These  letters 
I  did  not  print.  R.  M.  M."  In  the  transcript  is  added  in  a  paren- 
thesis after  the  weekday  the  date  5  April,  1818:  but  this  is  a  mis- 
take ;  the  5th  of  April  in  that  year  Avas  not  a  Monday ;  and  the 
contents  of  Keats's  letter  itself,  as  well  as  a  comparison  with  Hay- 
don's words  in  his  Autobiography,  prove  beyond  question  that  it  was 
written  on  Monday,  the  5th  of  January. 

P.  87,  note  1. — Similar  expressions  about  the  Devonshire  weather 
occur  in  nearly  all  Keats's  letters  written  thence  in  the  course  of 
March  and  April.  The  letter  to  Bailey  containing  the  sentences 
quoted  in  my  text  is  wrongly  printed  both  by  Lord  Houghton  and 


APPENDIX.  223 

Mr.  Forman  under  date  Sept.,  1818.  I  find  the  same  date  given 
between  brackets  at  the  head  of  the  same  letter  as  transcribed  in 
Woodhouse  MSS.  B,  proving  that  an  error  was  early  made  either  in 
docketing  or  copying  it.  The  contents  of  the  letter  leave  no  doubt 
as  to  its  real  date.  The  sentences  quoted  prove  it  to  have  been 
written  not  in  autumn  but  in  spring.  It  contains  Kcats's  reasons 
both  for  going  down  to  join  his  brother  Tom  at  Teignmouth  and  for 
failing  to  visit  Bailey  at  Oxford  on  the  way.  Now  in  September 
Keats  was  not  at  Teignmouth  at  all,  and  Bailey  had  left  Oxford  for 
good,  and  was  living  at  his  curacy  in  Cumberland  (see  p.  121).  More- 
over, there  is  an  allusion  by  Keats  himself  to  this  letter  in  another 
which  he  wrote  the  next  day  to  Reynolds,  whereby  its  true  date  can 
be  fixed  with  precision  as  Friday,  March  13th. 

P.  Ill,  note  1.  The  following  unpublished  letter  of  Keats  to  Mr. 
Taylor  (from  Woodhouse  MSS.  B)  has  a  certain  interest,  both  in  it. 
self  and  as  fixing  the  date  of  his  departure  for  the  North : 

"  Sunday  evening. 
"My  dear  Taylor, 

I  am  sorry  I  have  not  had  time  to  call  and  wish  you  health  til) 
my  return.  Really  I  have  been  hard  run  these  last  three  days.  However, 
au  revoir,  God  keep  us  all  well !  I  start  tomorrow  Morning.  My  brother 
Tom  will  I  am  afraid  be  lonely.  I  can  scarcely  ask  the  loan  of  books  for 
him,  since  I  still  keep  those  yon  lent  me  a  year  ago.  If  I  am  overweening, 
you  will  I  know  be  indulgent.  Therefore  when  you  shall  write,  do  send 
him  some  you  think  will  be  most  amusing— he  will  be  careful  in  returning 
them.  Let  him  have  one  of  my  books  bound.  I  am  ashamed  to  catalogue 
these  messages.  There  is  but  one  more,  which  ought  to  go  for  nothing 
as  there  is  a  lady  concerned.  I  promised  Mrs.  Reynolds  one  of  my  books 
bound.  As  I  cannot  write  in  it  let  the  opposite"  [a  leaf  with  the  name 
and  "  from  the  author,"  notes  Woodhouse]  "  be  pasted  in  'prythee.  Remem- 
ber me  to  Percy  St.— Tell  Hilton  that  one  gratification  on  my  return  will 
be  to  find  him  engaged  on  a  history  piece  to  his  own  content.  And  tell 
Dewint  I  shall  become  a  disputant  on  the  landscape.  Bow  for  me  very 
genteely  to  Mrs.  D.  or  she  will  not  admit  your  diploma.  Remember  me  to 
llessey,  saying  I  hope  he'll  Carey  his  point.  I  would  not  forget  Woodhouse. 
Adieu!  Your  sincere  friend, 

"John  o'Gbots. 

"June  22, 1S18.  Hampstead."  [The  date  and  place  are  added  by  Wood- 
house  in  red  ink,  presumably  from  the  post-mark.] 

P.  118,  note  1. — In  the  concluding  lines  quoted  in  my  text  Mr. 
Buxton  Forman  has  noticed  the  failure  of  rhyme  between  "All  the 
magic  of  the  place"  and  the  next  line,  "So  saying,  with  a  spirit's 
glance,"  and  has  proposed,  by  way  of  improvement,  to  read  "  with  a 
spirit's  grace."  I  find  the  true  explanation  in  Woodhouse  MSS.  A, 
where  the  poem  is  continued  thus  in  pencil  after  the  word  "  place :" 

"  Tis  now  free  to  stupid  face, 
To  cutters,  and  to  fashion  boats, 
To  cravats  and  to  petticoats — 
The  great  sea  shall  war  it  down, 
For  its  fame  shall  not  be  blown 
At  each  farthing  Quadrille  dance. 
So  saying  with  a  spirit's  glance 
He  dived." 


224  KEATS. 

Evidently  Keats  was  dissatisfied  with  the  first  six  of  these  lines  (as 
he  well  might  be),  and  suppressed  them  in  copying  the  piece  both 
for  his  correspondents  and  for  the  press,  forgetting  at  the  same 
time  to  give  any  indication  of  the  hiatus  so  caused. 

P.  126,  note  i.— Lord  Houghton  says,  "  On  returning  to  the  south, 
Keats  found  his  brother  alarmingly  ill,  and  immediately  joined  him 
at  Teignmouth."  It  is  certain  that  no  such  second  visit  to  Teign- 
mouth  was  made  by  either  brother.  The  error  is  doubtless  due  to 
the  misdating  of  Keats's  April  letter  to  Bailey :  see  last  note  but 
one,  p.  222. 

P.  136,  note  1. — Keats  in  this  letter  proves  how  imperfect  was  his 
knowledge  of  his  own  affairs,  and  how  much  those  affairs  had  been 
mismanaged.  At  the  time  when  he  thus  found  himself  near  the  end 
of  the  capital  on  which  he  had  hitherto  subsisted,  there  was  another 
resource  at  his  disposal  of  which  it  is  evident  he  knew  nothing. 
Quite  apart  from  the  provision  made  by  Mrs.  Jennings  for  her  grand- 
children after  her  husband's  death,  and  administered  by  Mr.  Abbey, 
there  were  the  legacies  Mr.  Jennings  himself  had  left  them  by  will: 
one  of  £1000  direct;  the  other,  of  a  capital  to  yield  £50  a  year,  in 
reversion  after  their  mother's  death  (see  p.  5).  The  former  sum 
was  invested  by  order  of  the  Court  in  Consols,  and  brought  £1550 
Is.  lOd.  worth  of  that  security  at  the  price  at  which  it  then  stood. 
£1666  13s.  Ad.  worth  of  the  same  stock  was  farther  purchased  from 
the  funds  of  the  estate  in  order  to  yield  the  income  of  £50  a  year. 
The  interest  on  both  these  investments  was  duly  paid  to  Frances 
Rawlings  during  her  life,  but  after  her  death  in  1810  both  invest- 
ments lay  untouched  and  accumulating  interest  until  1823,  when 
George  Keats,  to  whose  knowledge  their  existence  must  then  have 
become  known  for  the  first  time,  received  on  application  to  the  Court 
a  fourth  share  of  each,  with  its  accumulations.  Two  years  after- 
wards Fanny  Keats  received  in  like  manner  on  application  the  re- 
maining three  shares  (those  of  her  brothers  John  and  Tom  as  well  as 
her  own),  the  total  amount  paid  to  her  being  £3375  5.9.  Id.,  and  to 
George  £1147  5s.  Id.  It  was  a  part  of  the  ill  luck  which  attended 
the  poet  always  that  the  very  existence  of  these_  funds  must  have 
been  ignored  or  forgotten  by  his  guardian  and  solicitors  at  the  time 
when  he  most  needed  them. 

P.  146,  note  1. — Landor's  letter  to  Lord  Houghton  on  receipt  of  a 
presentation  copy  of  the  Life  and  Letters,  in  1848,  begins  character- 
istically as  follows : 

"  Bath,  Aug.  29th. 

Dear  Milnes,  .  , 

On  my  return  to  Bath  last  evening,  after  six  weeks  absence,  I  Unci 
your  valuable  present  of  Keatses  Works.  He  better  deserves  such  an  edi- 
tor than  I  such  a  mark  of  your  kindness.  Of  all  our  poets,  excepting  Shaks- 
peare  and  Milton,  and  perhaps  Chaucer,  he  has  most  of  the  poetical  char- 
acter—fire, fancv,  and  diversity.  lie  has  not  indeed  overcome  so  great  a 
difficulty  as  Shelley  in  his  Genet,  nor  united  so  many  powers  of  the  mind  as 
Southey  in  Kehama— but  there  is  an  effluence  of  power  and  light  pervad- 
ing all  his  works,  and  a  freshness  such  as  wo  feel  in  the  glorious  dawn  ul 
Chaucer." 


APPENDIX.  225- 

P.  150,  note  1. — I  think  there  is  no  doubt  that  Hyperion  was  begun 
by  Keats  beside  his  brother's  sick-bed  in  September  or  October,  1818, 
and  that  it  is  to  it  he  alludes  when  he  speaks  in  those  days  of 
"plunging  into  abstract  images,"  and  finding  a  "feverous  relief"  in 
the  "  abstractions  "  of  poetry.     Certainly  these  phrases  could  hardly 
apply  to  so  slight  a  task  as  the  translation  of  Ronsard's  sonnet,  Nat- 
we  ornant  Cassandre,  which  is  the  only  specific  piece  of  work  he 
about  the  same  time  mentions.     Brown  says  distinctly,  of  the  weeks 
when  Keats  was  first  living  with  him  after  Tom's  death  in  Decem- 
ber—"It  was  then  he  wrote  Hyperion;"  but  these  words   rather 
favour  than  exclude  the  supposition  that  it  had  been  already  begun. 
In  his  December-January  letter  to  America  Keats  himself  alludes  to 
the  poem  by  name, and  says  he  has  been  "going  on  a  little"  with  it; 
and  on  the  14th  of  February,  1819,  says,  "I  have  not  gone  on  with 
Hyperion."     During  the  next  three  months  he  was  chiefly  occupied 
on  the  Odes,  and  whether  he  at  the  same  time  wrote  any  more  of 
Hyperion  we  cannot  tell.     It  was  certainly  finished,  all  but  the  re- 
vision, by  some  time  in  April,  as  in  that  month  Woodhouse  had  the 
MS.  to  read,  and  notes  (see  Buxton  Forman,  Works,  vol.  ii.,  p.  143) 
that  "  it  contains  two  books  and  $  (about  900  lines  in  all) :"  the 
actual  length  of  the  piece  as  published  being  883  lines  and  a  word, 
and  that  of  the  draft  copied  by  Woodhouse  before  revision  891  and 
a  word  (see  note  to  p.  162).     When  Keats,  after  nearly  a  year's 
interruption  of  his  correspondence  with  Bailev,  tells  him 'in  a  "letter 
from  Winchester  in  August  or  September,  "  I  have  also  been  writ- 
ing parts  of  my  Hyperion,"  this  must  not  be  taken  as  meaning  that 
he  has  been  writing  them  lately,  but  only  that  he  has  been  writing 
them— like  Isabella  and  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  which  he  mentions  at 
the  same  time— since  the  date  of  his  last  letter. 

P.  162,  note  1. — The  version  of  The  Em  of  St.  Agnes  given  in 
Woodhouse  MSS.  A  is  copied  almost  without  change  from  the  cor- 
rected state  of  the  original  MS.  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  F.  Locker- 
Lampson,  which  is  in  all  probability  that  actually  written  by  Keats 
at  Chichester  (see  p.  131).  The  readings  of  the  MS.  in  question  are 
given  with  great  care  by  Mr.  Buxton  Forman  ( Works,  vol.  ii.,  p.  71 
folk),  but  the  first  seven  stanzas  of  the  poem  as  printed  are  wanting 
in  it.  Students  may  therefore  be  glad  to  have  from  Woodhouse's 
transcript  the  following  table  of  the  changes  in  those  stanzas  made 
by  the  poet  in  the  course  of  composition: 

Stanza  i. :  line  1,  for  "  chill "  stood  "  cold ;"  line  4,  for  "  was  "  stood 
"were;"  line  7,  for  "from"  stood  "  in  ;"  line  9  (and  Stanza  n.,  line 
1),  for  "prayer"  stood  "prayers."  Stanza  in. :  line  V,  for  "went" 
stood  "turn'd ;"  line  8,  for  "  Rough  "  stood  "  Black."  After  stanza 
in.  stood  the  following  stanza,  suppressed  in  the  poem  as  printed : 

4. 

"But  (here  are  ears  may  hear  sweet  melodies, 
And  ihere  are  eye?  to  brighten  festivals, 
And  there  are  feet  for  nimble  minstrelsies, 


226  KEATS. 

And  many  a  lip  that  for  the  red  wine  calls- 
Follow,  then  follow  to  the  illumined  halls, 
Follow  me  youth— and  leave  the  eremite- 
Give  him  a  tear— then  trophied  bannerals 
And  many  a  brilliant  tasseling  of  light 
Shall  droop  from  arched  ways  this  high  baronial  night." 

Stanza  v. :  line  1,  for  "  revelry"  stood  "  revellers  ;"  lines  3-5,  for 

"Numerous  as  shadows  haunting  fairily 
The  brain  new-stuff'd  in  youth  with  triumphs  gay 
Of  old  romance.    These  let  us  wish  away," 

stood  the  following : 

"Ah  what  are  they?  the  idle  pulse  scarce  stirs, 
The  muse  should  never  make  the  spirit  gay; 
Away,  bright  dulness,  laughing  fools  away." 

P.  164,  note  1. — At  what  precise  date  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci 
was  written  is  uncertain.  As  of  the  Ode  to  Melancholy,  Keats  makes 
no  mention  of  this  poem  in  his  correspondence.  In  Woodhouse 
MSS.  A  it  is  dated  1819.  That  Woodhouse  made  his  transcripts 
before  or  while  Keats  was  on  his  Shanklin-Winchester  expedition  in 
that  year  is,  I  think,  certain  both  from  the  readings  of  the  transcripts 
themselves,  and  from  the  absence  among  them  of  Lamia  and  the 
Ode  to  Autumn.  Hence  it  is  to  the  first  half  of  1819  that  La  Belle 
Dame  sans  Merci  must  belong,  like  so  much  of  the  poet's  best  work 
besides.  The  line  quoted  in  my  text  shows  that  the  theme  was  al- 
ready in  his  mind  when  he  composed  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  in  Janu- 
ary. Mr.  Buxton  Forman  is  certainly  mistaken  in  supposing  it  to 
have  been  written  a  year  later,  after  his  critical  attack  of  illness 
(Works,  vol.  ii.,  p.  357,  note). 

P.  183,  note  1. — The  relation  of  Hyperion,  A  Vision,  to  the  origi- 
nal Hyperion  is  a  vital  point  in  the  history  of  Keats's  mind  and  art, 
and  one  that  has  been  generally  misunderstood.  The  growth  of  the 
error  is  somewhat  interesting  to  trace.  The  first  mention  of  the 
Vision  is  in  Lord  Houghton's  Life  and  Letters,  ed.  184*7,  vol.  i.,  p.  244. 
Having  then  doubtless  freshly  in  his  mind  the  passage  of  Brown's 
MS.  memoir  quoted  in  the  text,  Lord  Houghton  stated  the  matter 
rightly  in  the  words  following  his  account  of  Hyperion:  "He  after- 
wards published  it  as  a  fragment,  and  still  later  re-cast  it  into  the 
shape  of  a  Vision,  which  remains  equally  unfinished."  When,  eight 
years  later,  the  same  editor  printed  the  piece  for  the  first  time  (in 
Miscellanies  of  the  PhUobiblon  Society,  vol.  iii.,  1856-7)  from  the  MS. 
given  him  by  Brown,  he  must  have  forgotten  Brown's  account  of  its 
origin,  and  writes  doubtfully  :  "  Is  it  the  original  sketch  out  of  which 
the  earlier  part  of  the  poem  was  composed,  or  is  it  the  commence- 
ment of  a  reconstruction  of  the  whole  ?  I  have  no  external  evidence 
to  decide  this  question;"  and  further:  "The  problem  of  the  priority 
of  the  two  poems — both  fragments,  and  both  so  beautiful — may  af- 
ford a  wide  field  for  ingenious  and  critical  conjecture."  Ten  years 
later  again,  wheu  he  brought  out  the  second  edition  of  the  Life  and 


APPENDIX.  227 

Letters,  Lord  Houghton  had  drifted  definitely  into  a  wrong  conclu- 
sion on  the  point,  and  printing  the  piece  in  his  Appendix  as  "An- 
other Version,"  says  in  his  text  (p.  206),  "  On  reconsideration,  I  have 
no  doubt  that  it  was  the  first  draft."  Accordingly  it  is  given  as  "  an 
earlier  version  "  in  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti's  edition  of  1872,  as  "  the  first 
version"  in  Lord  Houghton's  own  edition  of  1876;  and  so  on,  posi- 
tively but  quite  wrongly,  in  the  several  editions  by  Messrs.  Buxton 
Forman,  Speed,  and  W.  T.  Arnold.  The  obvious  superiority  of  Hy- 
perion to  the  Vision  no  doubt  at  first  sight  suggested  the  conclusion 
to  which  these  editors,  following  Lord  Houghton,  had  come.  In  the 
meantime  at  least  two  good  critics,  Mr.  W.  B.  Scott  and  Mr.  R.  Gar- 
nett,  had  always  held  on  internal  evidence  that  the  Vision  was  not  a 
first  draft,  but  a  recast  attempted  by  the  poet  in  the  decline  of  his 
powers :  an  opinion  in  which  Mr.  Garnett  was  confirmed  by  his  rec- 
ollection of  a  statement  to  that  effect  in  the  lost  MS.  of  Woodhouse 
(see  above,  Preface,  p.  v.,  and  W.  T.  Arnold,  Works,  etc.,  p.  xlix.,  note). 
Brown's  words,  quoted  in  my  text,  leave  no  doubt  whatever  that 
these  gentlemen  were  right.  They  are  confirmed  from  another  side 
by  Woodhouse  MSS.  A,  which  contains  the  copy  of  a  real  early  draft 
of  Hyperion.  In  this  copy  the  omissions  and  alterations  made  in 
revising  the  piece  are  all  marked  in  pencil,  and  are  as  follows  (taking 
the  number  of  lines  in  the  several  books  of  the  poem  as  printed); 
Book  I.     After  line  21  stood  the  cancelled  lines, 

"Thus  the  old  Eagle,  drowsy  with  great  grief, 
Sat  moulting  his  weak  plumage,  never 'more 
To  be  restored  or  soar  against  the  sun  ; 
While  his  three  sons  upon  Olympus  stood." 

In  line  30,  for  "  stay'd  Ixion's  wheel  "  stood  "  eased  Ixion's  toil."  In 
line  48,  for  "tone"  stood  "tune."  In  line  76,  for  "gradual"  stood 
"  sudden."  In  line  102,  after  the  word  "  Saturn,"  stood  the  cancelled 
words, 

"What  dost  think? 
Am  I  that  same  ?    O  Chaos  !" 

In  line  156,  for  "yielded  like  the  mist"  stood  "gave  to  them  like 
mist."  In  line  189,  for  "Savour  of  poisonous  brass"  stood  "A  poi- 
son-feel of  brass."  In  line  200,  for  "  When  earthquakes  jar  their 
battlements  and  towers  "  stood  "  When  an  earthquake  hath  shook 
their  city  towers."  After  line  205  stood  the  cancelled  line  "  Most  like 
a  rose-bud  to  a  fairy's  lute."  In  line  209,  for  "  And  like  a  rose  "  stood 
"  Yes,  like  a  rose."   In  line  268,  for  "  Suddenly  "  stood  "  And,  sudden." 

Book  II.  In  line  128,  for  "vibrating"  stood  "vibrated."  In  line 
134,  for  "  starry  Uranus  "  stood  "  starr'd  Uranus  "  (some  friend  doubt- 
less called  Keats's  attention  to  the  false  quantity). 

Book  III.     After  line  125  stood  the  cancelled  lines, 

"Into  a  hue  more  roseate  than  sweet  pain 
Gives  to  a  ravish'd  nymph,  when  her  warm  tears 
Gush  luscious  with  no  sob  ;  or  more  severe." 

In  line  126,  for  "  most  like  "  stood  "  more  like." 


228  KEATS. 

In  these  omissions  and  corrections  two  things  will  be  apparent  to 
the  student :  first,  that  they  are  all  greatly  for  the  better,  and  sec- 
ond, that  where  a  corrected  passage  occurs  again  in  the  Vision,  it  in 
every  case  corresponds  to  the  printed  Hyperion,  and  not  to  the  draft 
of  the  poem  preserved  by  Woodhouse.  This  of  itself  would  make  it 
certain  that  the  Vision  was  not  a  first  version  of  Hyperion,  but  a  re- 
cast of  the  poem  as  revised  (in  all  probability  at  Winchester)  after 
its  first  composition.  Taken  together  with  the  statement  of  Brown, 
which  is  perfectly  explicit,  as  to  time,  place,  and  circumstances,  and 
the  corresponding  statement  of  Woodhouse  as  recollected  by  Mr. 
Garnett,  the  proof  is  from  all  sides  absolute  ;  and  the  "  first  version  " 
theory  must  disappear  henceforward  from  editions  of  and  commen- 
taries on  our  poet. 

I\  191,  note  1. — A  more  explicit  refutation  of  Haydon's  account 
was  given,  some  years  after  its  appearance,  by  Cowden  Clarke  (see 
Preface,  no.  10) ;  not,  indeed,  from  personal  observation  at  the  time  in 
question,  but  from  general  knowledge  of  the  poet's  character : 

"I  can  scarcely  conceive  of  anything  more  unjust  than  the  ac- 
count which  that  ill-ordered  being,  Ilaydon,  the  artist,  left  behind 
him  in  his  'Diary'  respecting  the  idolised  object  of  his  former  in- 
timacy, John  Keats.  .  .  .  Haydon's  detraction  was  the  more  odious 
because  its  object  could  not  contradict  the  charge,  and  because  it 
supplied  his  old  critical  antagonists  (if  any  remained)  with  an  au- 
thority for  their  charge  against  him  of  Cockney  ostentation  and  dis- 
play. The  most  mean-spirited  and  trumpery  twaddle  in  the  para- 
graph was,  that  Keats  was  so  far  gone  in  sensual  excitement  as  to 
put  cayenne  pepper  on  his  tongue  when  taking  his  claret.  In  the 
first  place,  if  the  stupid  trick  were  ever  played,  I  have  not  the  slight- 
est belief  in  its  serious  sincerity.  During  my  knowledge  of  him 
Keats  never  purchased  a  bottle  of  claret;  and  from  such  observa- 
tion as  could  not  escape  me,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  his  domestic 
expenses  never  would  have  occasioned  him  a  regret  or  a  self-reproof ; 
and,  lastly,  I  never  perceived  in  him  even  a  tendency  to  imprudent 
indulgence." 

P.  195,  note  1.— In  Medwin's  Life  of  Shelley  (1847),  pp.  89-92,  are 
some  notices  of  Keats  communicated  to  the  writer  by  Fanny  Brawne 
(then  Mrs.  Lindon),  to  whom  Medwin  alludes  as  his  "  kind  corre- 
spondent." Medwin's  carelessness  of  statement  and  workmanship 
is  well  known :  he  is  perfectly  casual  in  the  use  of  quotation  marks 
and  the  like ;  but  I  think  an  attentive  reading  of  the  paragraph 
beginning  on  p.  90,  which  discusses  Mr.  Finch's  account  of  Keats's 
death,  leaves  no  doubt  that  it  continues  in  substance  the  quotation 
previously  begun  from  Mrs.  Lindon.  "  That  his  sensibility,"  so  runs 
the  text,  "  was  most  acute,  is  true,  and  his  passions  were  very  strong, 
but  not  violent;  if  by  that  term,  violence  of  temper  is  implied.  His 
was  no  doubt  susceptible,  but  his  anger  seemed  rather  to  turn  on 
himself  than  others,  and  in  moments  of  greatest  irritation  it  was 
only  by  a  sort  of  savage  despondency  that  he  sometimes  grieved  and 


APPENDIX.  229 

wounded  his  friends.  Violence  such  as  the  letter  "  [of  Mr.  Finch] 
"describes  was  quite  foreign  to  his  nature.  For  more  than  a  twelve- 
month before  quitting  England  I  saw  him  everyday"  [this  would 
be  true  of  Fanny  Brawne  from  Oct.,  1819,  to  Sept.",  1820,  if  we  except 
the  Kentish  Town  period  in  the  summer,  and  is  certainly  more  near- 
ly true  of  her  than  of  anyone  else],  "I  often  witnessed  his  suffer- 
ings, both  mental  and  bodily,  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  he 
never  could  have  addressed  an  unkind  expression,  much  less  a  vio- 
lent one,  to  any  human  being."  The  above  passage  has  been  over- 
looked by  critics  of  Keats,  and  I  am  glad  to  bring  it  forward,  as 
serving  to  show  a  truer  and  kinder  appreciation  of  the  poet  by  the 
woman  he  loved  than  might  be  gathered  from  her  phrase  in  the 
letter  to  Dilke  so  often  quoted. 


THE    END. 


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